


Sparkling Silence of a Dream

by GoodnightDearVoid97



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Fix It Fic, Ghost Stories AU, but they come out alright in the end, our favs go through it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 47,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27664780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodnightDearVoid97/pseuds/GoodnightDearVoid97
Summary: Jean has been without Lucien for a year, and he has spent every second of that time trying to get home to her.
Relationships: Jean Beazley/Lucien Blake
Comments: 43
Kudos: 26





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [escapewithstories](https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapewithstories/gifts).



> I dedicate this, my first multi-chapter story, to my beta, escapewithstories, who has gone above and beyond over the last several months, helping me turn this shower thought into a coherent story. I cannot thank her enough (but I def will try at the beginning of every chapter).
> 
> Title is derived from "Echo" by Christina Rossetti.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy!

Prologue

April 2, 1964

Jean dreaded the aftermath of a knock at the door. Even after a year of disappointments, she still hoped to open the door to the face she most wanted to see. To give up on hope would be to give up on him, and while she knew from experience that she would eventually feel differently, she refused to rush away from any tether to Lucien.

Most days, Jean was content. She preferred not to aim for happiness, since even her tolerance for disappointment had its limits, but sometimes, sitting at the dinner table surrounded by friends or playing with Amelia in the garden, she felt it. But tonight, Jean was alone. Only Matthew boarded with her at present, and he had taken Alice for her first trip to the pictures. Ever diligent to his unspoken promise to Lucien, Matthew remained dedicated to keeping her safe, physically and emotionally, but Jean refused to be coddled or smothered by his well-intended constant presence.

So, after washing up after a quiet dinner, Jean sat in the den, listening to the band on the wireless and sipping whiskey. Drinking in excess worked so well for Lucien that every now and again she thought she'd see if sipping in moderation helped at all.

She'd just poured her second finger of whiskey when the knock came.

In most of Jean's imaginings, Lucien returned under just these circumstances, on lonesome nights when missing him was unavoidable, with the wireless crackling between tunes, his coping mechanism burning in her throat. On nights like these, she felt closer to the angry person he used to be.

In a flash she was at the door, knowing it wasn't him, but _wanting_ it with all her might.

Even without the alcohol, Jean couldn't have contained her shock when she saw who stood on her doorstep.

"Mei Lin!"

If Lucien had been at the door, Jean would have been less surprised. She and Mei Lin had struck up a regular correspondence after Lucien's disappearance, but they never discussed a visit.

As if she expected a fight, Mei Lin held up both hands. "I'm so sorry to come unannounced, Jean, but I have business of the upmost importance, and its sensitive nature prevented me from writing you first."

_Sensitive nature?_ "Um, no, it's alright. I'm—I'm just surprised to see you." Jean laughed nervously as she stepped aside, further puzzled by the solitary trunk at her visitor's feet. Mei Lin had traveled halfway across the world with no notice, but she apparently didn't plan to stay long. "Please, come in. Can I carry that for you?"

Mei Lin shook her head as she picked up her luggage. "It's not heavy, and I'll just leave it here in the doorway. I thought I would stay at the hotel."

"Nonsense! Of course, you should stay here." Jean closed the door behind Mei Lin and the cab that drove back down the lane. "The guest room is always made up, and it's no imposition." After Mei Lin set her trunk next to the stairs, Jean gestured to the den. "Would you like some tea? Or a sherry? I'm afraid I don't have any shandy."

Mei Lin smiled softly at her host as Jean led the way into the den. "Whatever you're having is perfectly alright."

With a sheepish smile, Jean nodded to the tray of whiskey. "Even whiskey?"

"Especially whiskey."

Their shared amusement broke the tension. Even so, as Jean procured another glass from the cabinet under the window, Mei Lin apologized again. "If the news I bring was not so urgent, I would never have presumed to surprise you like this."

Though she would never say it, Jean thought that nothing Mei Lin said or did could be worse than the last time she surprised her. However abrupt, Mei Lin's presence was more of a comfort this time, perhaps because now they had both loved and lost the same beautiful man.

Clean glass in hand, Jean took a seat next to Mei Lin on the couch. "I won't hear of it. You're always welcome here." Jean hated to think that Mei Lin assumed her right to admittance to this house disappeared with her ex-husband. The slosh of whiskey in the glasses broke the brief silence. "I do hope your family is alright. Does this concern them?" As she handed Mei Lin a glass, the other woman's hand trembled, and she didn't speak again until she had taken two sizeable sips.

"They are quite well, thank you. We are all well—please don't worry." She paused, studying the brown liquid at the bottom of her glass. When she lifted her face to Jean's, her eyes shone. "I come bearing…glad tidings. It isn't often that you travel so immediately for a miracle instead of a tragedy."

Hope fluttered in the pit of Jean's stomach, simultaneously nauseating and invigorating her.

"I have a long and complicated story to tell, and I spent the entire voyage puzzling over how to tell it." Mei Lin bit her lip and shook her head. "And still I have no idea how to start. So forgive me—" Mei Lin reached for Jean's hands and held them both in her lap. "Forgive me for shocking you, and trust me when I promise that this story has a happy ending."


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A year earlier, Lucien was called to Sydney. . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your responses to the prologue were so encouraging! Thank you all for reading and leaving such kind reviews. Buckets of love and massive hugs to escapewithstories <3 
> 
> Normally, I will only update once a week because the story isn't quite finished yet, but since the prologue was really just a tease, chapter 1 has come a little early.

March 20, 1963

With a furrowed brow, Lucien Blake studied the unopened letter in his hand. He’d solved cases in China before, since a surprising number of his clients sought relatives lost in the fall of Singapore, so the address didn’t trouble him. Instead, he was sure he’d seen this handwriting before, but the name on the return address rang no bells. Dismissing the matter with a shake of the head, he sliced the envelope open and unfolded the letter, written in that strangely familiar Mandarin hand.

_Dr. Blake,_

_My name is Ming Lu, and I write in the hopes of procuring your services to find my father. The investigator who helped you find your child is a family friend, and he referred me to you since he has taken on his maximum number of clients._

_The last time I saw my father was February 9, 1942. Like many fathers, he fought in the battle of Singapore and was presumed dead, though his body was never recovered. About three years ago, I started making enquiries through my connections with the military. There is no record of my father from 1942 until 1956. He resurfaced in September 1956, but the government legally changed his name to Cheng Shao. The records after that are inconsistent, but I know he emigrated to Sydney, Australia, in 1959, and the trail ended there._

_My mother is in poor health, so traveling, even for something as important as this, is impossible. All I require of you, should you accept this assignment and the payment enclosed, is to go to the Registrar’s office in Sydney to locate my father’s current address, which will be listed under the name Cheng Shao. If I know for certain where he is, I would like to travel there after my mother’s health improves._

_I look forward to hearing from you, one way or the other._

_Sincerely,_

_Ming Lu_

Leaning back in his chair, Lucien rubbed a hand over his beard. The fall of Singapore had ripped apart countless families, and each time he worked a case involving that dreadful battle, he thought of the other children, mothers, and fathers whom he couldn’t help. And each time, Jean counseled him to remember the importance of his own search for his wife and child, the relief in finding them after seventeen years of dead ends and false hope, and to think about giving that closure to someone else.

With that in mind, Lucien swallowed his trepidation and drafted his response.

_Mr. Lu,_

_I can easily reach Sydney, but I will not be able to depart until March 27. Hopefully, by then, this letter will have reached you, and you can rest assured that the search for your father will likely be over soon. However, I must advise you to prepare yourself for news you aren’t expecting. It is easy to pin all your hopes on a potential discovery, only to be thwarted by fate._

_If I should find anything other than what you’re hoping for, I will contact you immediately, and we can negotiate from there._

_Best,_

_Lucien R. Blake_

“Lucien?”

When he looked up, Jean, fetching as ever in pale blue trousers and a white blouse, was leaning on the study doorframe. “Lunch is on, if you’re ready.” At her summons, Lucien dropped the letter at once, but Jean’s gaze flickered down to where it landed on his desk. “New client?”

Even with his response written, the troubling familiarity Lucien couldn’t place made him wary of committing. “Potentially,” he said. “I wouldn’t have to go far. The young man has apparently done some research of his own, and the information he needs is in Sydney.”

When Lucien stopped in the doorway, Jean reached up to straighten the knot of his tie. “Sounds simple enough. You wouldn’t have to go right away, would you?”

Looping his arms around his wife’s waist, Lucien pulled her flush against him. “As if I would consider taking on a client before our anniversary. I have plans for you.” He grinned against her lips as she chuckled.

“What a coincidence, Dr. Blake. I’ve plans for you, but you have to be patient.”

God _, that voice._ Deep, brazen, wanting. Changes in Jean such as these were one of the many joys of their marriage. With his lips and tongue, Lucien stole any chance of elaboration along with her breath. “Why be patient when we can indulge now and make more plans later, Mrs. Blake?” He slid his hands down her back and over her bum, hoping to catch the backs of her thighs in his hands and hoist her up, but the sound of keys dropping on the front porch and Matthew’s subsequent curses sent Lucien and Jean flying apart and bolting to the kitchen.

When Matthew finally unlocked the door and stomped inside, Jean stepped into the hall, hair perfect and lipstick only mildly smudged. “Ah, Matthew. We were just having lunch.”

* * *

For propriety’s sake, the Blakes waited until they finished their nightly drink with Matthew after dinner before disappearing into their bedroom. Half a day’s teasing hastened their tryst, so within half an hour they lay sated and boneless in bed, Jean’s leg draped over Lucien’s hip and her head on his chest. For a while, only the crackling of the burning firewood permeated the easy silence of their haven. Just as Lucien’s eyelids fluttered closed, Jean spoke.

“If this man’s father disappeared for so many years, how did his son find him again?”

Since clients had been the last thing on his mind for the past few hours, Lucien took a moment to respond. His nose buried in his wife’s hair, Lucien breathed in the scent of her shampoo, grounding him in the present as he tapped into atrocious memories. “A precious few Chinese soldiers survived the internment camps, but not all of them were immediately returned to their families. Even I didn’t go home after the war, but of course that was my choice. I worked for British Intelligence, and during my time there, I…came across several Chinese men who had been held captive in Japanese camps. If this man did serve in such capacity for his own country, Mr. Lu’s father probably lived under a multitude of aliases before resurfacing in retirement.”

Jean hummed, tracing infinity symbols on Lucien’s bare chest. “Did you have to live that way?”

For many reasons, Lucien hardly discussed his time in Intelligence. It marked the darkest days of his grief and nearly the darkest manifestation of it. He served justice, but not for those he wanted to avenge, and he hated himself for it.

He reached across his body to pull Jean closer, her skin soft and real against his. “Yes, sometimes. In that line of work, you’re not your own person anymore. They—they own you”

Jean buried her face in his neck and kissed it. “Not anymore,” she whispered against his skin. “You’re my darling, now.”

At any other time, that promise would have comforted him, but now it only reminded him of the penmanship, the mystery buried too deeply in his memory to uncover. He had no reason to distrust this client, certainly not over handwriting that Lucien might be mixing up with any number of his correspondents’. 

“What is it?” As always, Jean knew.

“Oh, it’s nothing really,” Lucien insisted.

Jean propped herself up on an elbow and brushed her fingertips over his forehead. “ _Nothing_ is creasing your brow.”

Sighing, Lucien avoided her gaze. Usually he had no problem talking problems through with Jean, but he knew that as soon as he spoke of his suspicion, Jean would not be easy until he came home. The days of keeping secrets to lighten each other’s load, however, were long gone.

“I recognize the client’s handwriting, but I can’t place it,” he admitted. Sure enough, when he dared steal a glance at his wife, his worry lines were reflected on her face. “It’s ridiculous, but I have this feeling…not _bad_ necessarily. Just… _persistent_. This shouldn’t keep me from going—it’s only Sydney, after all. I just wish I could shake this feeling, like having the answer on the tip of your tongue.”

Jean tugged absently at a loose thread in the bedspread that covered their hips. “Your instincts are usually right, Lucien.”

“Well, my instinct is to go to Sydney and be careful.” When Jean huffed and rolled onto her back, Lucien rolled onto his side and turned her face towards him with a caress along her jaw. “You know that I will be careful, don’t you? You are…too precious to me, Jean.” The warmth in his chest trickled up to his face when Jean combed her fingers through his hair, but her eyes remained pensive and searching.

“One day, I hope you realize just how precious you are, Lucien.”

* * *

On the morning of Lucien’s departure, Jean drove him to the bus station. The usually sparsely populated station was bustling that morning, so, after handing off Lucien’s luggage to a bus boy, the couple huddled in the nearest secluded corner to say their goodbyes.

“Promise you’ll call as soon as you check in at the hotel?” Jean fussed with Lucien’s jacket, smoothing out invisible wrinkles and fiddling with the buttons.

A boy burdened with trunks lumbered toward them, so Lucien steered Jean out of his path. “I promise, but it probably won’t be until much later this evening. The sooner I wrap this up, sooner I can come home.” When Jean nodded but avoided his gaze, Lucien tipped her chin up with his thumb and forefinger, _tsk_ ing when he saw tears welling in her eyes. “Oh, my darling—”

Jean sighed and swatted at two escaping tears. “No, I’m fine. This is silly. You’ll only be gone a couple of days.”

Muttering platitudes about nonsense, Lucien held his arms open for her. “C’mere.” In moments like these, Lucien wondered if his investigative business was worth upsetting his wife. Of course, part of their shared trepidation came from the bloody itch he couldn’t scratch, but he knew that even without his misgivings, he’d rather stay home, with Jean. The last time he broached the subject with her, she insisted that he was doing meaningful work, that she loved him even more for his drive to help others. Now, with the two tear tracks fresh on Jean’s cheeks, Lucien knew that when he came home from Sydney, he wouldn’t leave Jean again.

The bus driver’s obnoxious honk reminded them that the bus ran on a schedule that others relied on. Lucien held Jean’s face in his hands and skimmed his thumbs over her pink, wet cheeks. “I love you so much.”

Jean hummed and kissed him tenderly. “I love you.” With a resolute nod toward the bus, she added, “Off you pop,” but Lucien stole one more kiss before boarding the bus to Sydney.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucien arrives in Sydney.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was brought to you by escapewithstories' keen editorial eye, without which this story would be shite. 
> 
> It's going to get a little bumpy, but I promise it'll be okay!

March 27, 1963

After slapping the top of the cab, Lucien turned to face the hotel. In the city that built the tallest building in Australia, this establishment stood out for its small stature—only three stories with narrow red awnings. Lucien preferred The Acacia to the monstrous and expensive hotels nearby, but its main attribute was its proximity to the Land Registry Office.

The Acacia lobby accosted the senses. Shiny, pale gold tiles covered the floor until it collided with walls the color of a wilted rose. Tunes played with a drunken clumsiness Lucien could identify from experience emanated from the bar, whose entrance faced the front door. No doubt to distract from the smell of alcohol, bouquets of flowers Lucien couldn’t begin to name covered every flat surface.

At the concierge desk stood a chap not yet twenty, wearing a gold and red uniform the same color as the drapes. When Lucien approached, he wondered whether the boy had ever encountered a customer before.

“C-can I help you? Sir?”

Lucien lifted his travel case. “Just checking in. Should be registered under Lucien Blake.”

Rifling through the guest roster in front of him, the boy, Ben, according to his nametag, muttered three or four names under his breath before he reached Lucien’s. With a nervous smile, he turned to retrieve a key from the wall behind him. “You’ll be in room—” He broke off to glance at the nearly empty page again. “Room 12, sir, and if you like, I can carry your bag up to your room,” he said, offering Lucien the key.

“Tell you what. If you’ll take my bag upstairs, I’d like to post this letter, if you can point me in the right direction.”

Another fifteen minutes saw the end of Lucien’s delivery, phone call to Jean, and check-in, and, determined to keep up the pace, Lucien set off on foot for the Land Registry Office. Luckily, Ben was better at giving directions than he was at checking guests in, so Lucien found the office easily. After showing the clerk his private investigator’s license, she led him to the room that housed land titles for the 1950s and 60s. The records room was no more than a cement block with harsh lighting, off-white walls, and row after row of steel filing cabinets.

The clerk pushed her orange-rimmed glasses up into her red hair and sighed. “It looks like a lot, and I won’t lie to you—it is. Everything in here is filed by date of purchase, not by name. I’ve got too much filing to do downstairs, or I’d help you rifle through all this.”

“That’s alright. Thank you very much, Peggy.”

Peggy kicked a rubber door stopper into the space between the floor and the bottom of the door, and Lucien got to work.

It took two hours to go through each file because he had no idea what year Mr. Shao purchased his property. Five paper cuts in, he made a mental note to ask for more details from his next client. Three-quarters of the way through 1957, his fingers finally brushed against Cheng Shao’s deed. He plucked the paper-clipped stack of papers from the cabinet, shut the drawer, and slapped the pile on top of the cabinet.

Lucien had no trouble finding the address, which he noted in his notepad. However, on the off chance that more than one Cheng Shao moved to Sydney in 1957, Lucien thoroughly examined every sheet, hoping to find a former address in China, a passport number, or work visa that could be traced back to his client’s father. He knew what it felt like to be crushed by a false lead. His finger traced every word, every signature, but when he saw a thick black line obscuring the name of the property owner of Shao’s last known address in China, his finger stuttered. Redactions were fairly common in a military record, but finding a redacted name on a deed for someone’s home struck Lucien as odd, especially since the deed was already in Shao’s file. What other name could anyone expect to find under that black line? A brief scan of the next few pages of Shao’s file produced more redactions, hiding the names of former neighbors or next of kin.

This file belonged to a man who not only left his true identity behind in his home country, but also wanted to keep his it a secret from the government. 

He’d spent much of his time in British Intelligence chasing men who, after Lucien retired, mysteriously disappeared at the behest of their own governments. Men like Huan Jiang, who knew too much to be _taken care of_ in the usual way. He’d nearly gone mad carrying out Chinese government-sanctioned assassinations of twelve people. During their last encounter, Lucien only narrowly escaped with his life, but not before he was subjected to the torture countless others had suffered at the hands of this ruthless operative.

Lucien shook his head. Redactions did not equate to nefarious intent. It could be these papers weren’t even supposed to be in Shao’s file. He’d nearly convinced himself that he was reading too much into nothing when he heard Huan Jiang’s voice for the first time in eleven years. He _felt_ it, like the physical manifestation of a thump in an empty house. Though the tone bore no resemblance to the one Lucien remembered, the eerily even, unattached one accompanied by a knife to Lucien’s throat, he would know it anywhere.

A furtive glance over his shoulder granted Lucien a glimpse of Huan Jiang in the hallway, conversing amiably with Peggy, who must have stopped by to check on Lucien. Before Lucien could plot a speedy exist, that voice turned on him.

“Blake, is that you?”

Of all the ways he’d feared they would meet again, Lucien never imagined Jiang would greet him so jovially. He forced himself to turn and adorn his best smile. “Cheng. It’s been such a long time.”

And yet time had barely touched Jiang. Not a strand of gray marred his head full of dark hair, and, save a scar on his forehead that he must have obtained after Lucien’s dealings with him, his face was still relatively smooth, like he had few occasions to either smile or worry.

When Jiang moved to shake Lucien’s hand, his open jacket revealed a gun at his hip.

This time, when Jiang spoke, his whisper took on a more familiar, icy intonation. “Take the file and follow me.” Pulling back, Jiang seamlessly morphed into the old friend. “So good to see you. Are you hungry? Let’s grab lunch.”

“Yes, I’m finished here,” Lucien said, with a pointed glance at the young woman he prayed would make it out of this encounter alive. “Thank you again, Peggy.”

Peggy adjusted her grip on her stack of files, pulling them close to her chest like a shield Lucien wished she had. “Sure. You know the way out?”

Jiang winked at her. “I’ll make sure he does.”

With an armed lunatic at his side, Lucien knew better than to signal anyone for help on his way out of the Registry Office. His mind raced, searching for years of information he thought he would never have to recall, details that could help him talk his way out of this mess. Outgunned, he had no shot of fighting his way out of it. One detail about Jiang was impossible to forget: when ordered to use lethal force, he never failed.

After spending hours in a poorly lit room, the sunlight burned Lucien’s eyes as he scanned the streets for a policeman. Instead, he saw a mother wrestling three small children down the sidewalk, a gaggle of teenagers loitering outside a pub, so he held his breath until Jiang pressed his hand into Lucien’s shoulder and shoved him into the passenger seat of Jiang’s sedan. As soon as he slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door, he sighed heavily.

“Lucien Blake. Of all people.”

“Huan Jiang. You shouldn’t be surprised, considering you’ve been keeping an eye on me. Miraculous that you can find informants here. How else would you have known exactly where I was?”

Without responding, Jiang pulled out into traffic, and while Lucien did not know Sydney well, within a few miles he knew that Jiang was taking them inland, towards the outskirts of town.

That did not bode well.

He had to get him talking. When Lucien was assigned to Jiang all those years ago, British Intelligence had no idea Jiang had children, or at least Lucien’s superiors didn’t share that information with him. Since he could have used the lives of his family as leverage, he leaned toward the former assumption. If the boys at Intelligence didn’t know, Jiang likely didn’t know either.

“Though I doubt it makes a difference to my situation, you should know that the British did not send me here. I retired years ago. Your son sent me.”

For a moment, Jiang’s silence and unaltered countenance led Lucien to believe that he’d either been wrong, or Jiang truly did not feel anything. Then his jaw twitched. “My son is dead.”

As Jiang drove, houses, schools, and family vans replaced businesses, restaurants, and cabs. Lucien was running out of time.

Jiang pleasantly surprised Lucien by speaking. “The last time I saw my son, he, along with sixteen of his boyhood friends, was fighting to get out of his school, which the Japanese had set on fire.”

As soon as the words left his captor’s lips, Lucien knew he’d heard this story before.

“I had been fighting for two days already, forced to leave my wife and child in a city that was destined to burn. When I tried to get to him, I was shot in the leg and a fellow soldier dragged me away from the school to save my life and condemn those of seventeen children.”

The pit in Lucien’s stomach deepened when he realized that though Jiang was a fairly common name in China, coupled with this familiar story, the handwriting in Mr. Lu’s letter…

Jiang was Li’s married name.

Jiang’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “I searched for my family after the war, but my superiors confirmed their deaths shortly after.”

His son-in-law’s words echoed in Lucien’s ears like drums.

_We had been evacuated to the school for safety, as if the Japanese would spare the children_ , he’d said, his eyes trained on his feet. _We had just opened our lunches when the first shell hit the other side of the building. Within seconds, all I could see, hear, smell, was fire. We gathered at the window, desperate for air but too afraid to climb out. It was probably shock, but I swear, for a moment, I saw my father coming to save me._

Lucien had no time to absorb his shock. He had to prove to Jiang that his superiors either didn’t know or lied to him about his family, without telling him that his son married Li. Even the thought of a monster like Jiang knowing Li existed nauseated Lucien. No, he could not protect Li in Singapore, but he’d be damned if he didn’t protect her now.

“Jiang, listen to me,” Lucien urged, trying to keep his voice even, calm, placating. “According to the letter your son—Gen, yes?”

Without taking his eyes off the road, Jiang hissed, “Don’t mock me.”

Now, only trees dotted the landscape, and up ahead, a bridge hovered under rain clouds.

“Gen survived the war, spent most of it in an orphanage, but after the war, his mother found him.” _Her name. Dear God, what was her name?_ “Jinjing. Jinjing searched, just like you, and found your son.”

Jiang’s jaw and knuckles relaxed, and the disturbing blankness returned to his face. Lucien’s window of opportunity on that tactic had closed for now, so he considered his other options. Wherever they stopped, it would be in a rural area. He had no weapon, no backup, no extra set of keys to pilfer, and likely no witnesses. Gen’s location was his only leverage, though Lucien would never take Jiang anywhere near his daughter or his granddaughter. No, he would lie for long enough to get out of this mess and turn him as late as customs if he had to.

Anything that got him home to Jean, whose fears, the ones he brushed away with empty assurances, were materializing.

After Jiang drove over the bridge, he pulled over onto the side of the road. “Out.”

The water coursing under the bridge, not quite ten feet below, almost gave Lucien hope until he saw the jagged rocks piercing the surface of the river. His last resort would be to jump. If he died in the attempt, at least he’d know that he hadn’t simply waited for Jiang to put a bullet in his head.

As Jiang nudged him toward the bridge with the barrel of his gun, Lucien noticed a pair of fishermen upstream, currently oblivious to the two strange men crossing meant for traffic on foot. For their sakes, he hoped they remained preoccupied with their task.

Lucien slowly turned to face his foe, careful not to startle him with sudden movements. “Huan. Listen to me. The government told you that they were dead, yes? Probably just to use your anger to their advantage. It was abominably wrong of them, but your son persisted, unwilling to accept what he couldn’t prove. He wants to know you, and God knows you want to know him. I can help you.”

Jiang almost snickered. “Helping each other was never part of our relationship, Blake.”

“That’s when I worked for the government. And I don’t think either of us look on those times fondly.” The water crashing over the rocks sounded so much louder this close.

“It didn’t stop you from trying to kill me.”

The bridge railing was almost too high to scale in one go. One moment of hesitation could render his efforts futile. “Nor you me, but you’re the one pointing the gun at me years after we left the business.”

“You’re the one looking for me.”

“At your son’s behest.”

For a second, a light flickered in Jiang’s dead eyes, and Lucien allowed himself to think of home, of Jean.

Then Jiang reached inside his coat.

Lucien didn’t bother to think about the best way to jump. He simply leapt to his left, hoisted himself over the railing, and fell. The freezing water numbed him almost immediately, but no sooner had the current started dragging him downstream did his back collide with one of the precarious rocks. What little breath he retained rushed out of his lungs, and the pain blinded him. Instinct sent him up for air, but he knew that would be his last for a while. In his efforts to stay alive, he had to fool Jiang into thinking he drowned, but when his head struck another rock, he worried that he wouldn’t have to fool anyone.

Dizzy and sputtering, Lucien forced himself back under, his arms stretched out in front of him to catch the brunt of any other obstacles. The gash on his forehead burned in the murky water, his heartbeat thudded in his ears, and his lungs screamed for air, but if he could just last a couple more minutes, just a fifty more meters, the riverbend would conceal him from Jiang’s watchful eye. He could find help and go home. Damn the head injury. All he needed was Jean.

Just when the dizziness threatened to overwhelm him, Lucien felt slick mossy rocks on his right, signaling the start of the bend to the left. Using the rocks as a rudder, he guided himself though the sharpest turn of the bend, then burst through the surface for breath. He swam toward the shore and grasped at rocks and weeds and roots until he’d hoisted himself onto dry land. Flopping onto his stomach, he coughed river water up until he thought he would vomit.

But he’d escaped.

The crunch of tires on gravel nearly made Lucien thank God. At least he wouldn’t have to find the strength to go far for help. His rescuer had already gotten out of his car by the time Lucien could life his head, but instead of a facing a Samaritan, he stared down the barrel of a gun.

“If you are telling the truth, you can help me,” Jiang said, “and you will.” 


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mei Lin gives Jean some answers, and Jean tries to process it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's time to return to Ballarat for a little bit. Friendly reminder that escapewithstories is an absolute gem.

April 2, 1964

_Lucien is alive._

She heard the words, watched Mei Lin’s lips form them, felt Mei Lin’s hands tighten on her own, but Jean struggled to connect the words with reality. Believing he was alive was easier than believing he was alive and not home.

“Where is he?” Her tone cut deeper than Mei Lin deserved, but desperation overrode any other considerations. Only imprisonment or bodily harm would keep him from her, so the nightmare couldn’t be over yet. “Is he hurt? Is that why he’s not home?”

Mei Lin’s voice remained steady and calm, and her eyes never left Jean’s face. “He is in a hospital in Shanghai, recovering from injuries sustained during his escape. Li is with him.” She paused then, giving Jean the chance to process the bad news before piling more on. “The doctors are optimistic about his recovery, but his injuries were severe. He was shot in the leg and chest.”

Jean’s arms coiled around her abdomen. “Did they catch his assailant?” The words gushed from her mouth on a breath. “Is it over?”

“Yes.”

After over a year of tossing and turning, weeping, imagining the worst, grieving a loss Jean couldn’t accept, bless Mei Lin for this quick, painless relief. But of course, she would provide it, knowing Jean’s pain from a much more prolonged experience. She spent _seventeen years_ without knowing what fate befell her husband and child. Jean couldn’t imagine sixteen more years like the last one.

When Jean first voiced her concerns to Matthew, he insisted that Lucien had simply gotten swept up in his case. _He’s only been gone a day and a half, Jean. You know how he gets._ How he tortured himself in the weeks and months afterward, as the hope of finding Lucien alive dwindled. Even after he directed his anger toward Lucien, for being more enticed by a case than by staying safe for the sake of the people who loved him, he never forgave himself. By the time he turned to his contacts in Sydney, he had waited too long. Rose’s mother barely survived a car accident a week after Lucien left, and Matthew had to go to her immediately. Luckily, Charlie and Danny had no qualms with taking time off to investigate the disappearance of a man to whom they owed so much and who meant everything to Jean Blake.

As soon as they returned from Sydney, Jean’s boys sat on either side of her on the couch in the den. Danny held her hand in both of his before ever opening his mouth, and Jean, despite promising herself that she would be brave for both herself and the boys, burst into tears.

The bellboy at The Acacia told the Danny and Charlie that not only had Lucien not checked out of his room, but he had also not seen Lucien since he checked in a week ago. Fortunately, the boy remembered giving Lucien directions to the Land Registry Office, where the detectives hoped to find another helpful witness.

At the Registry Office, they met Peggy Turner, the clerk who helped Lucien. While she showed them the logs, where Lucien signed in but never signed out, she explained that she wasn’t sure if he found the file he was looking for, but the last time she saw him, he’d run into another gentleman— _an old friend, by the looks of it_ —who said something about lunch. After an unsuccessful canvasing of the nearby restaurants, there wasn’t much else the detectives could do on their own.

Superintendent Henry Crawford of the Sydney Police Department was happy to help his old friend Matthew Lawson, to whom he owed many favors, so when Danny and Charlie officially reported Lucien missing that afternoon, he offered to personally supervise the missing persons investigation. He only required that, while the department appreciated their work so far, Danny and Charlie remove themselves from the investigation.

During the first few days that followed the boys’ trip to Sydney, Jean hated herself for breaking down every other hour. She’d endured the trials of a missing husband before. It should have been _easier_. She should have been _stronger_. But every time she remembered their conversation regarding his reluctance to accept this case, she hated herself more for not pushing harder. _It’s only Sydney_ , he’d said. _You know that I will be careful, don’t you? You are too precious to me_. Precious enough to not take the client, if she’d only asked him to stay.

_It’s funny isn’t it?_ he’d once asked. _How your life can turn on a single moment, on a single decision._

During their engagement, Jean had expressed her expectations of how their marriage would work and how he would have to alter his habits, but she didn’t want to be a stifling wife. Lucien’s heart ached with the need to help others, and the last thing Jean wanted was to inhibit his ability to do so. How could she, when his compassion and empathy endeared him to her? Those feelings prompted her to leave it alone, to trust Lucien.

If only Lucien’s actions had been the only factors.

Between Christopher Jr., Alice, Matthew, Danny, and Charlie, Jean hardly spent a moment alone. On the night Danny and Charlie left for Sydney, Alice spent the night at the Blake house, trying her best to be helpful but making the least reassuring promises. Christopher, unable to obtain time off work at first, called his mother every morning and every night. When Matthew realized how dire his sister’s condition was, Matthew requested that Danny and Charlie be temporarily transferred to Ballarat to pick up the slack until he could return. (When the brass argued with him, he simply offered him the alternative, leaving Bill Hobart in charge.) After three weeks of intense treatment and physical therapy, Rose’s mother’s condition improved, and he immediately came home to support yet another loved one. About that time, Christopher’s supervisor approved his request for two weeks’ bereavement, which he spent consoling his mother as best he knew how. He’d done this before too, but this time, he held his mum while she cried.

Of course, Jean appreciated the attention from her boys, but with their constant presence and support came their pity and condescension. As if she couldn’t hear them whispering in the hallway on the telephone or behind the closed door of Lucien’s study. As if she needed them to walk on eggshells around her and never mention the man she most wanted to talk about.

Rose called in every favor she had and, between asking how Jean was feeling and if she was sleeping, reported the fruitless results to Jean. Her new friends from her book club brought casseroles and roasts and lots of sweets to lose herself in. Everyone meant well, but they all thought he was dead, not missing. _Lucien Blake_ , they whispered in the marketplace, _ran headlong into danger for the last time_. Even after the police in Sydney told her that a pair of fishermen saw him fall from a bridge, they never found a body. _No body, no proof_ , she told herself as she knelt by her bed each night. _Please don’t punish him for loving me. Please bring him back._

Mattie came as soon as she could, about three months after Lucien had gone missing, and with her arrival came the first real comfort Jean had felt since the earliest days of this nightmare, when all she could do was weep. They’d barely separated from a bone-crushing hug before Mattie whisked Jean’s coat, scarf, and hat off the hook by the door. Knowing that after weeks of smothering Jean needed to be out of the house, Mattie drove them to Lake Wendouree.

“Everyone thinks he’s gone, Mattie.” The pair had bundled up on the bench, their noses pink from the biting wind. “Of course, I’m grateful for everyone’s concern and sympathy, but they think he’s gone, and they think I’m some porcelain doll. I’ve done this before—” Her voice broke, and she curled her fist so tightly that her fingernails broke the skin of her palm. “But I keep _crying_ , so what else are they supposed to think?”

Mattie took Jean’s hand in hers. “Crying doesn’t make you fragile, Jean. It’s not a weakness to show what you feel.”

The thought of Matthew and his inconsolable anger came to mind. Why couldn’t she show her feelings like that, in a more acceptable, masculine fashion?

“I feel something different from one day to the next. Devastated that he’s missing, guilty for not making him stay, angry at him for leaving even though he had misgivings—and I know that’s normal. With Christopher, even though I didn’t hear from him for six months, I knew where he was, why he wasn’t answering my letters. And still, it was everything I could do to stay sane for the boys.” She could feel the phantom of Lucien’s fingers against her cheek, removing the tears but not their tracks. “I don’t know enough about what I feel to combat it, yet everyone assumes they know what I’m feeling, like it’s _simple_.” Her simmering anger warmed the tears on her cheeks. “The only simple thing about this whole mess is that I want it to be over.”

Finally, it was over.

Mei Lin’s touched one of Jean’s arms, wrapped too tightly around her waist. “Jean, take a deep breath. Do you want me to get you some water?”

Her lightheadedness prompted Jean to agree. Loosening her grip around her waist, she shook her head. “No, I—just keep talking.”

Mei Lin drew the breath Jean didn’t take. “Lucien did not react well to being ordered not to travel.” With a small smile, she shook her head. “He tore his stitches trying to check himself out of hospital to get on a plane.”

Jean almost wanted to laugh. “He’s a dreadful patient.”

“Li has her hands full.”

Smiling wistfully, Jean corrected her. “No, he’ll do anything for her.”

Something in that comment made Mei Lin’s back straighten and her shoulders clench. “Yes, he will. And I confess that has something to do with this whole…mess.” Jean didn’t dare slow Mei Lin down by asking what she meant. “The man who hired Lucien used a false name for reasons he will have to explain.” For the first time since the beginning of their conversation, Mei Lin broke eye contact, to swipe at her own tears. “Li’s husband, Gen, hired Lucien to find his father, Huan Jiang, who has been holding Lucien hostage for the last year.”

On countless occasions, Jean had woken in the middle of the night to Lucien’s thrashing or howling. From the beginning, when she slept upstairs instead of next to him, his suffering made her ache. For years, Jean could only speculate what horrors tormented him. But one night, after she’d kissed every scar on his back, he revealed some, never all, of the memories that tortured him to this day, memories of the tiny cell, the beatings, the starvation, the hopelessness.

He may have spent the last year reliving it all.

Eyes burning with unshed tears, Jean pressed her palms against her eyelids, desperate to ground herself, to escape the tempests of queries and confusion. Suddenly, her losses of Christopher and Lucien, crushed together like two puzzle pieces that _almost_ fit, separated enough for her to find a better match. She _had_ done this before, and just like the last time, she would square her shoulders and do what needed to be done.

Unlike last time, she would have the man she loved in the end. 

Jean could hardly imagine Li’s pain. While Lucien had frequently made terrible decisions without consulting his partner, he’d never betrayed Jean to such an extent. “Is Li alright?”

Mei Lin smiled as if she knew that would be Jean’s first question on the subject. “You are too kind. Despite his insolence in this matter, Gen is a good man, one who treats Li as Lucien treated me, with respect and admiration. That said, Li is…angry and conflicted. Her relationship with Lucien is complicated, you know.”

Jean nodded. “I do. It’s hard to feel…what you feel that you ought for a father who wasn’t there, no matter what the circumstances.” The bottle of whiskey clinked against her glass as she poured another drink.

“After a lengthy discussion, I convinced Lucien to send me in his stead,” Mei Lin continued, watching Jean screw the cap back on. “We agreed that sending a letter would not only be insufficient to explain the complexities of the still evolving situation, but also cruel to you.” Mei Lin reached into her jacket pocket, and Jean chided herself for not offering to take her guest’s coat. However, when Mei Lin placed an envelope with Jean’s name written in Lucien’s script and two plane tickets on the cushion between them, little mattered but devouring his missive and getting to China as fast as possible.


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jiang reveals what he wants with Lucien.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Especially grateful to escapewithstories for her help with this chapter, where we learn Jiang is truly a Bad Motherf*cker.

March 27, 1963

Though nearly every part of his body throbbed from his collision with the rocks, Lucien considered himself lucky to be laid out on the backseat of the car, not stuffed in the trunk. Jiang had correctly assumed that even if Lucien thought escape was possible, he lacked the energy to attempt it. Every time the car bounced over a dip or a pothole in the road, pain nearly blinded him.

Pain rapidly devolved into delirium, and he surrendered to the fantasy that all of this was a horrible dream, that he would wake up to Jean whispering in his ear and smoothing sweaty curls from his forehead, as she always did when such terrors took hold. Yes, it would be over soon, and he’d learn a lesson from this cautionary tale about a mistake he never made. Jean would make everything alright, and he’d never leave her again….

Like a bucket of cold water, the jolt of the car’s parking brake doused him in harsh reality. He reached out, hands tied in front of him, to catch himself before he slid into the floorboards. He tried to use his other senses to block the pain, to determine his location before Jiang yanked him out of the backseat and fresh hell descended. The smell of gasoline permeated the fog, and left Lucien with more dread than hope. He heard the hinges of the driver’s side door creak open and shut. As Jiang rounded the trunk, Lucien caught a glimpse of a bike hanging upside down from a rack in the ceiling, and the tools that hung on the wall.

Then Jiang tugged on Lucien’s legs, and the pain in his ribs overwhelmed him as he forced himself to sit up and ease out of the car before his captor broke another bone. He barely had time to confirm his suspicions about his surroundings before Jiang led him further into the garage and through a squeaky back door with peeling paint. Directly to the right were wooden stairs leading down into the dark.

_Of course, he has a bloody basement._

Jiang nodded toward the staircase and tightened his hold on Lucien’s neck. About three steps down, Jiang flipped a switch with the hand that held the gun, and dim light allowed Lucien a look at the wooden landing and cracking cement floor below. As he descended, Lucien noted that the large basement was dark and freezing, the light from the stairwell casting everything in eerie half-light. As he reached the landing, he saw a row of dusty wine cabinets ahead of him, lining the right wall. Stumbling down the last three steps, he nearly tripped over a bin labeled _Lawn Ornaments_. Jiang pushed Lucien toward the only other door in the basement, on the back wall, flanked by two sparsely populated bookshelves. Jiang pulled a keyring out of his back pocket and unlocked the heavy metal door with one of the many keys. The next room was too dark to see anything in detail, but Lucien’s first thought was that it was small, and that there was no other way in or out. _One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight_ steps until he stumbled onto a cot at the far end of the room. He landed on his back, his head finding refuge on a surprisingly soft, downy pillow. No sooner had Jiang untied the rope binding Lucien’s wrists did he slap a chain around his ankle. How typical of Jiang, paranoid but always prepared, to have a prison in his basement for the poor bastards who get in his way. Without another word, Jiang turned tail and left, the sound of the door latch echoing even in the small space, leaving Lucien alone in darkness.

His breath quickened instantly, and though he knew pacing would help relieve the already building tension, Lucien hadn’t the energy to lift his head, much less his whole body. The only advantage of his anxiety was that it would keep him from losing consciousness before he could determine more about his surroundings and his injuries. Jiang’s silence, more unsettling than ever, gave Lucien no indication that he would treat his injuries. Lucien need not be healthy to find Jiang’s son. 

In the absence of alternate coping mechanisms, Lucien focused on regulating his erratic breathing. He’d never excelled at meditation, but he tried with all his might to focus on the sensation of his breath leaving and entering his lungs. His efforts lasted only twenty seconds or so before his mind drifted to Jean, the only person around whom he’d been able to wrestle his demons into submission. Her voice, never far from his mind, eluded him now, drowned out by the throbbing in his skull, the pain in his midsection, and the sprinting of his pulse.

 _Hush now_ , she’d whisper. _You’re safe. I’m here. It’s over. It’s over._

It’d only just begun.

The door groaned open, and this time, Jiang tugged a tiny chain just inside the doorway, a small bulb illuminating the room. Lucien took a quick inventory—gray cement floors and bare walls, white ceiling with an air vent too small to climb through above his head, black metal frame for the twin-sized cot he lay on. Without bothering to close the door behind him, Jiang approached slowly, his feet bare and tread silent, with a glass of water in one hand and a med kit in the other.

“I don’t know what you plan to do,” Lucien said, groaning as he sat up. Any doubts he harbored about the nature of the injuries to his abdomen disappeared. “Nothing much you can do for a couple of broken ribs and a concussion.”

Maddeningly, Jiang didn’t respond, only opened the case beside Lucien’s feet. Lucien’s eyes flickered to the open door, toward freedom that beckoned if not for this damn chain. Jiang wasn’t stupid enough to leave his keyring somewhere easily accessible. If he wanted to escape, Lucien had to get his ankle out of the chain without Jiang noticing. Perhaps if he found a loose spring in the bed to straighten and then jimmy the lock with…

Jiang’s few seconds of rummaging produced a prescription pill bottle, which he offered to Lucien. When Lucien scoffed at the idea of taking a pill from his captor, Jiang rolled his eyes, uncapped the bottle, popped a pill in his mouth, and swallowed it without water, opening his mouth to prove it.

Reluctantly, Lucien accepted the bottle and struggled with the cap. “Develop a drug habit while I wasn’t looking, Jiang?”

One eyebrow inched upward on Jiang’s blank face. “The wound you inflicted on me did not heal properly.”

Perhaps he could fight his way out. He would have to get into better shape, first. Jean’s cooking had spoiled him…

Swallowing the water and the pills, Lucien grimaced. “My apologies. Next time I shoot you in the shoulder, I’ll operate on you afterwards.” While he knew now was not the time for cheek, the words poured out of his mouth before he could filter them. Luckily, Jiang didn’t react violently; he simply packed up the kit and left the room, leaving the light on this time.

Unwilling to endure the agony of lying back down, Lucien rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes. The light hardly relieved his claustrophobia and panic, but thanks to the narcotic, blissful unconsciousness would surely rescue him soon. He never thought he’d hope for incapacitation in a hostage situation, but for now, he rested in the fact that if Jiang didn’t need Lucien to find his son, he would have killed him on the riverbank. Until Lucien became expendable, he would live.

But Lucien would rather die than lead Huan Jiang to his daughter.

Lucien struggled to reconcile what he knew about Jiang’s interrogation methods with the person who gave him pain killers and a bed to sleep on in an otherwise sterile room. Not all Lucien’s scars originated from his time in the camp. On his last mission related to Jiang, he’d been apprehended and tortured for seven hours before his partner, Charles Fitzwilliam, got clearance to execute a rescue operation. Jiang had a sadistic fascination with electricity and its effect on open wounds.

Jiang and his devices got nothing from Lucien then, and they sure as hell wouldn’t get anything from him now.

Unfortunately, by the time Jiang realized that, Lucien may already be dead.

Li would be safe. But Jean would be left alone, again, and it would be all his fault. Perhaps Christopher had been right, initially, to be wary of his mother’s relationship with such a reckless man, behind whom misery left a smoldering trail. The boy would have to pick up the pieces after yet another husband abandoned his mother.

 _No._ He would find another way out of this, for Jean.

Eyelids heavy, Lucien could almost hear her voice now, feel her fingers running through his hair.

 _Lie down, Lucien_ , she said. _Close your eyes. Rest while you can._

Sliding back down, Lucien fell unconscious before his head hit the pillow.

* * *

Waking was harder than Lucien anticipated. His body felt too heavy to lift, but why should he rush to get up? Jean wouldn’t mind a lie-in after the day he’d had. Without opening his eyes, he reached for Jean but rapped his knuckles on a wall.

If he had to relive the shock of his reality every time he woke, Lucien would never sleep peacefully again.

Groaning, he rolled over, wishing he had one of those pills to knock him out for another twelve hours. He nearly had a heart attack when he found Jiang, sitting in a wooden chair behind a small coffee table on which sat two cups of coffee and two bowls of cereal. Jiang nodded to Lucien and gestured for him to take a seat in the empty chair. Breakfast for two between captive and captor would be uncomfortable, but perhaps Jiang would clue Lucien in on what exactly he wanted from him.

Once Lucien rose from the bed and settled in the chair, he realized his hunger. If it was indeed morning, it had been twenty-four hours since his last meal. But he’d waited longer before. As calm and collected as he could be while coming out of a narcotic coma, he picked up the coffee mug closest to him and tried to find out if Jiang came downstairs armed today. From now on, Lucien had to seize every opportunity to escape.

“Are we going to spend the rest of our lives like this, or is there something else you want from me?” This time he’d blame his cheek on his empty stomach.

Sitting comfortably with one ankle crossed over his knee, Jiang chewed his cereal slowly. Still the same cocky bastard he’d been in 1952, only age had added patience to his repertoire. “You were the one who offered to help me, Blake. You know why you’re here.”

Lucien noted the keyring on Jiang’s right hip, but no weapon. “To help you find your son.”

“Not quite.” Jiang stirred his coffee with his cereal spoon. “When my superiors told me that my wife and son were dead, what was left of my conscience disappeared. There hadn’t been much left to lose. You remember what the camps were like, what they turned good men into.”

“I do,” Lucien said. “But some of us managed to find ourselves again.”

“Yes, with the help of loved ones.”

If Lucien had eaten any breakfast, he’d have thrown it up right then.

Jiang continued as if he hadn’t just dangled Lucien’s entire world off a cliff. “Thanks to my superiors, I did not have that help. Our work was messy—mine a little messier than yours, granted.”

“While we’re discussing differences, I’d like to add that I never enjoyed carrying out my orders, Jiang.”

“I will not waste my time debating that point with you.” His voice never rose, never betrayed any emotion. “Neither will I claim that what I did was right or that I bore any less responsibility for following orders. My son—” His pause almost betrayed his feelings. “My son shouldn’t have to know a man like the man I was. And he won’t, if you and I do our job properly. I may not be able to change what I’ve done, but I can eliminate those who know anything about my former life, and who committed greater sins than I.”

Lucien would have filled the silence with a question if the shift in conversation hadn’t directed his focus back to what Jiang could possibly know about Lucien’s loved ones.

“You are going to help me locate the officers who told a man, whose only hope was finding his family after the war, that they were dead. And you’re going to help me kill them.”

In less dire circumstances, Lucien would have burst out laughing, but he couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice. “You want to take a hostage, a former member of British Intelligence, across the world to kill Chinese military officials?”

Jiang reached into his trouser pocket and retrieved a small notebook, much like Charlie’s. Skimming one finger down the first page, his lips quirked up in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Li Blake, born January 1936.”

The rest of Jiang’s words echoed in Lucien’s ears. _Rescued from Singapore…sent to orphanage…adopted by Li Wei and Lian Tsang in 1945…married 1958…one daughter, Ying Yue Jiang._

He couldn’t have failed Li already. No one from the old days was supposed to find information about his ex-wife and his daughter. He’d planned for this, there were protections in place to prevent this, to protect them—

Back in his element, Jiang finally smiled. “You’ve been keeping things from me, Blake. All that time we hunted each other without knowing we had the same weakness. And now we’re family. Imagine that.”

“You bastard.”

“In the years I’ve lived in Australia, it’s been hard to make friends, but the ones I have made are very informative.”

“Not informative enough to tell you your own son is alive.” The force of Jiang’s backhand nearly sent Lucien careening out of his chair. Through this first reaction, Lucien had found a nerve to pinch.

By the time Lucien wiped the blood from his mouth, Jiang’s veil had slid back into place. “Perhaps not. But he did tell me about Jean.”

For many years, Lucien couldn’t see past his anger—at his father, at the Japanese soldiers who blew his world to bits, at his captors in the camp, at anyone who dared have a life after the war. Everything was tinted in red. It had been years since he’d learned to cope, but now the red was back, and he couldn’t remember what it felt like to see the world as others did, serene and colorful.

“There’s nothing like sharing your life with someone you both love and admire,” Jiang continued, flipping another page in his notepad. “My wife and I shared that bond. You’re lucky to have found that, even so late in life.”

“This has nothing to do with Jean—”

“It certainly doesn’t have to,” Jiang agreed. “In fact, I’d rather not be distracted from my objective. You know how this works. You do what I want, and at the end of this, we both get to see our wives and children, safe and healthy.”

He had to be mad to think that Lucien would believe that, after aiding and abetting a murderer, Jiang would set him free. Then again, a sane man wouldn’t have used his son’s wife as leverage to get back into his son’s good graces.

“I want what you want, Blake. To get back to my family and to be worthy of them.” Jiang rose, towering over Lucien and his untouched, soggy breakfast. “And we’ll both do anything to that end.”

Every muscle in Lucien’s body poised to attack, but Jiang’s next words sucked all the air out of the room.

“Defy me, delay me, inhibit me in any way, and I’ll take a trip to Ballarat and ensure that Jean knows what torture at my hand feels like.”


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean reads Lucien's letter, and Matthew comes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last update before Christmas! Happy holidays to you all <3

April 2, 1964

With a trembling hand, Jean reached for the envelope adorned with her name, written in her husband’s handwriting. This letter could assuage all her doubts. Of course, Jean knew that Mei Lin believed everything she had told her. Mei Lin would have no reason to concoct a story like this, nor would she ever hurt Jean by doing so. But in the back of Jean’s mind lurked the possibility that this was all an elaborate misunderstanding, that she would arrive in Shanghai with every ounce of hope she possessed, only to be devastated by a case of mistaken identity or a third party’s nefarious intent.

Now, she held proof of life in her hands.

“I am going to make us some tea,” Mei Lin said, her soft voice like a gong in the silent room.

“Thank you.” She did not tear her eyes from the letter, in case this precious missive would disappear the second she blinked. When Mei Lin’s footsteps faded, Jean ripped open the envelope, ravenous for the words written by a man she spent months worrying that she would never see again.

_My darling,_

_I don’t know how to begin, other than with an apology. If I had trusted my instincts and stayed behind, you would never have suffered as you undoubtedly have for the last year. You told me to be careful, and my assurance turned out to be just another in a string of broken promises. I know you’ll wish otherwise, but I will never forgive myself. I know what it’s like to be left behind without answers, and I’d do anything to take that pain from you._

_If not for these bloody overprotective doctors, I’d be home by now, but I hope what little information Mei Lin can give you provides you with some peace of mind. An old friend at the British consulate procured two plane tickets for the two of you. He and I wanted to send Mei Lin right away, but unfortunately, there is a bit of a mess to be sorted out between the British consulate and the Chinese. Rest assured that it_ will _be sorted, and as soon Mei Lin is allowed to leave, she will be on the first flight to Australia. I’m hoping that by the time she returns with you, I’ll be right as rain and nearly ready to come home. Li has opened her home to me to convalesce once I’m released from the hospital. Her husband has moved out, temporarily, I hope. God knows I’m well aware what it means to keep secrets from a loved one because you think it’s best, and I feel for the boy._

_There is so much I need to tell you, but it’s best to wait until I can answer all your questions immediately before I divulge more than you already know. The circumstances of my capture and rescue are complex, as Mei Lin has no doubt told you. There is so much I_ want _to tell you—how I’ve missed you, how you’ve occupied my thoughts every moment of the last twelve months, how impossible it is that I love you more now than ever—but whatever drugs I’m on have me fumbling for the right words and clinging to my trains of thought. You deserve better, after so long. I’m so desperately sorry, Jean. I’ll never leave you again._

_Yours, with much affection,_

_Lucien_

From the moment she read the salutation, Jean knew God hadn’t punished Lucien for loving her after all.

With shaking fingers pressed against her dry lips, she swallowed the sob lodged in her throat. Why should she cry now, when Lucien’s words reached her not from beyond the grave, but merely across the ocean? Why should she cry when her worst fears could be stowed, like winter clothes in the summer months, easily accessible but tucked out of sight? Why, why, why…

Because, as he pointed out, he’d made promises before. He’d promised to be careful, to figure out the divorce together, to drink less—

_To have and to hold, to love and to cherish_ …

After she realized that the startling, broken sob had come from her lips, Jean dropped the letter into her lap and clapped both hands over her mouth on instinct. Soon, her hands migrated to cover her eyes, and she cried openly in the silent parlor. For months, she had cried over what she lost and what no one else could find. Now, her vigil was over, and months of tension and false hopes and unanswered prayers gushed out with every exhale.

She vaguely registered the sound of Mei Lin’s voice just before her small arm wound around Jean’s shoulders. “I’m sorry.” Jean pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes, hoping to dam the tears. “This is just so much.” Briefly she imagined how much worse it would have been to read this news in a letter, with no opportunity to ask questions or clarify any miscommunications, and have to make arrangements to get to China as fast as she could. She dropped her hands into her lap, wiping her palms on her dress, and looked right into Mei Lin’s small, dark eyes, narrowed in concern and pooling with tears. “I’m so grateful that you’re here.”

Mei Lin squeezed Jean’s shoulder. “I know what it means to both live your life thinking you’ve lost everything and to come back from the dead. You have been through too much to go through this on your own.” She gestured to the plane tickets in her lap. “Our flight leaves at 6:00 p.m. tomorrow, from Rose Bay Airport in Sydney. I came from the airport by bus and bought two tickets for us at the bus station when I arrived in Ballarat. We’ll have to leave early—6:00 a.m. at the latest.”

Before Jean could respond, she heard the tap of Matthew’s cane on the floor, just before the front door shut.

“Jean? You didn’t have to wait up—”

By the time Jean thought to warn her friend, he stood frozen in the den doorway, eyes flicking from one woman to the other. Her tear-stained face must have concerned him, for his shoulders instantly tensed and his eyes narrowed in that unsettling manner with which he surveyed suspects.

“I didn’t realize you were expecting company.”

Nearly tripping over the couch leg in her haste to both stand and spin around to face her friend, Jean shook her head. “It’s alright, Matthew. This is Mei Lin Bai, Lucien’s…”

“Ex-wife,” Mei Lin finished. “You must be Superintendent Matthew Lawson. Lucien often spoke kindly of you.”

Even with the stranger identified, Matthew’s wariness did not dissipate. He limped forward with his hand outstretched. “Pleasure,” he said tightly.

To Jean’s horror, Matthew looked to her for an explanation for their guest’s presence. Lately, anything related to Lucien pained Matthew, but God knows how he would react to the news Mei Lin brought. While she knew there was no easy way to break the bizarre revelation of Lucien’s safety, Jean knew she could not keep the truth from one of her closest friends.

“Matthew, Mei Lin has some news—”

“At 10:45 at night?”

Ordinarily, Jean would have snapped at him about being out so late himself, but the Mei Lin’s news would punish him enough for his cheek.

“Jean?” Matthew muttered. He limped closer, stopping just behind the couch. “Were you expecting her? Is something wrong with Li?”

Running both hands through her mussed hair, Jean sighed. “No, I wasn’t expecting her, and Li is safe. Mei Lin doesn’t need a tragedy to be welcome in my home, Matthew.”

“Of course, she doesn’t. Why would I—” Exasperated, he tilted his head back, eyes closed. “I’m just concerned.”

“Matthew, Mei Lin has news regarding Lucien.”

The lines of confusion and frustration disappeared from Matthew’s paling face. “Oh, God.”

Jean held out her hand, palm upturned, and nearly sighed with relief when Matthew took it. “For the last twelve months, Lucien has been held hostage by a man called Huan Jiang.” Matthew’s eyes didn’t leave hers for a moment, but they hardened. “Lucien went to Sydney for the same reasons that we thought, but he didn’t know that his son-in-law had hired him under a false name. He had no idea he would be looking for Jiang, who found him before he could leave Sydney. He’s too ill to travel, so Mei Lin brought two return tickets for a flight to Shanghai that leaves tomorrow. I’ll bring him home as soon as he’s able to travel.”

Matthew let go of her hand to clench his fist instead. As in any situation involving Lucien, Matthew’s first reaction was frustration. In fact, he had spent the better part of the last year being angry with his friend. A few months before, he’d confessed to Jean that he threatened Lucien the night before their wedding. _If you ever hurt that woman, I’ll kick your ass so hard you’ll wish you’d never saved my leg_. But Jean had always known that the bulk of Matthew’s anger was not for injustices he suffered, but for the injustices those he loved suffered.

Lucien’s exoneration of the charge of carelessness Matthew indicted him for did not change the fact that his disappearance put those Matthew cared for through the ringer. Even though he, Danny, and Charlie spent time at the house chiefly to comfort Jean, they needed the emotional support. One afternoon Jean caught them huddled together over Lucien’s desk. Danny held the letter from whom they thought was Mr. Lu, Charlie ran his hand over his face as he studied the return address on the envelope, and Matthew, head in his hands, sat in one of the chairs on the patient side of the desk.

“I just want to find something, anything,” Charlie said. Jean hadn’t heard him sound so dejected since he broke her favorite serving bowl.

“They’re doing all they can in Sydney, son,” Matthew sighed. The man to whom these boys turned to for answers had none.

“But in the meantime, what are we supposed to tell Auntie Jean?” Danny’s voice broke, and he threw the letter on the desk, stormed out of the study, and collided with his aunt. “I’m sorry, Auntie.” He had barely choked the words out before Jean wrapped him up in her embrace, grateful to comfort someone else for a change.

“I don’t expect you to solve this one, alright?” Jean peered over her shoulder and locked eyes with Matthew. Charlie couldn’t seem to lift his eyes from the floor. “You don’t have to bring him back.”

Naturally, they didn’t listen. They preferred bearing the responsibility of finding Lucien to grieving his loss.

Alice, on the other hand, grieved earlier than the rest. Never one to value idealism over pragmatism, she accepted her friend’s fate sooner. Of course, since she replaced Lucien as police surgeon, she had no choice but to come to grips with a reality without him. Around Jean, she tried not to reveal the depth of her suffering, but in a group so tightly knit, such a secret was impossible to keep. She never set foot in his office, she preferred to work in the morgue without an assistant, and one night, about six months ago, she nearly bit Charlie’s head off for sitting at the head of the table, where Lucien should have been.

That night, she and Jean sat on the bench in the garden, and for the first time in months, Alice relinquished her careful hold on her emotions.

“I’d never had a best friend,” Alice said, staring off at Jean’s begonias. “No matter my age or disposition, I never seem to be suitable for people. I say the wrong things, I miss social cues that seem so obvious to everyone else, I don’t conform to what is expected of me as a woman or a physician.” When Jean took her hand, Alice stared first at their clasped hands, then into Jean’s face. “Lucien always adapted to my idiosyncrasies instead of expecting me to adjust my personality to suit him.” The tears pooling in her eyes sent Alice’s gaze down to her lap. “Lucien had to die before I realized that I had a best friend after all.”

Without a word, Jean scooted closer to her friend and draped an arm around her. For a person in such a different stage of acceptance, what could she say?

“I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to comfort you like everyone else.”

Before, Jean had been content to simply listen, but she refused to let Alice think that she hadn’t been a godsend. “No, Alice, you’ve been wonderful.” At Alice’s incredulous look, Jean continued, “The boys have been wonderful, but they’re… so _careful_ with me. It’s like I’m not a real person anymore, like all I am is my grief. You, Alice.” Jean ducked her head to meet Alice’s averted gaze. “You have been so brave, accepting what none of us can. I know you love Lucien, no less than any of us. You’ve shown me that it’s possible to move forward, that you believe I can move past this and do something with the life I have left. I’m so grateful, Alice, truly.”

She pulled out her handkerchief, never far these days, and offered it to Alice, who dabbed at her cheeks. “Every time I have the urge to cry, I think, _Lucien wouldn’t want this_. But some days I don’t give a damn what he would have wanted.”

“You should talk to Matthew,” Jean said, only half joking. “He seems to be stuck in that mindset these days.”

With his sister’s accident and subsequent convalescence, Matthew barely had time to recover from one tragedy before another punched him in the gut. After the first couple of weeks, as more bad news came from his friend in Sydney, his worry dissolved into an ire that ebbed and flowed but never dissipated. Alice had brought some hope and happiness back into his life, but it would take time before he fully trusted another person with those two fragile states of mind. Even so, for the past couple of months, he seemed to be coming out of the smoke, perhaps even making peace with his friend and the choices he made.

Once again, Lucien Blake turned his world upside down.

“You’re sure?” Matthew’s whisper sliced the silence. “You’re absolutely sure.”

Jean reached down for the letter that had fallen onto the cushion when she rose. “Mei Lin can be trusted, and even if she had been misinformed, Lucien wrote me. It’s his handwriting, his…it’s him.” When Matthew simply stared at her, mouth agape, eyes wide, she soldiered on. “I know this is a shock, Matthew, and I know there are so many unanswered questions—”

“For starters, what did this bugger want with Lucien that took twelve months, why did the coppers in Sydney make zero progress on the case, how the hell did they get from Sydney to _bloody_ Shanghai without anyone noticing—”

“I cannot answer all your questions, Superintendent.” Mei Lin had to raise her voice to be heard of Matthew’s roar. “But I will answer those I can.”

Grateful that someone else had the answers Matthew sought, Jean eased back down on the couch. Mei Lin followed her lead, and Matthew took a seat in the chair opposite the couch. 

“First of all, you should both know that Huan Jiang is a man that Lucien was assigned to tail during his time working as an intelligence officer.”

Jean lifted a hand to her aching head, and Matthew cursed under his breath. After all these years, yet another monster in Lucien’s closet had come calling. He rarely spoke about his intelligence work, mostly because he was legally obligated not to, but also because likely had to carry out orders that he would never dream of following now.

“What was a former Chinese military operative doing in Sydney?” Matthew asked.

“I do not know for sure. Since he was an operative, the military likely retired and relocated him because he is too valuable to be killed but too dangerous to employ.” When Matthew and Jean both stared at Mei Lin, she held up a hand. “Those seventeen years Lucien searched for me were spent in unpleasant but informative company.”

Taking her seat between Matthew and Mei Lin, Jean frowned. “Do you know why he kept Lucien so long?”

Mei Lin shook her head. “When I left, Jiang was still being interrogated.”

“He’s alive?”

“Yes, Superintendent, and Lucien is fortunate.” She paused, casting a furtive glance at Jean.

“What is it?” Jean pressed.

Hesitating, Mei Lin worried at her bottom lip. “Apparently, Jiang committed a series of…crimes over the last year.”

“Crimes?” Thankfully, Matthew’s tone had softened. While he didn’t know Mei Lin and had no reason to trust her as implicitly as Jean did, Jean had hoped that his friends’ trust in Mei Lin would be enough.

Mei Lin pointedly avoided looking at Jean. “Murders.”

Suddenly nauseous, Jean rose, intent on fetching a glass of water. Violence of this magnitude was supposed to be locked away in Lucien’s past, yet he watched one of his enemies kill, with no hope of stopping him. At the sink, she turned on the tap and stared out the window into the moonlit garden, where Lucien once laid out a picnic blanket for them on a fine spring afternoon, most of which Jean spent in Lucien’s lap, kissing him instead of eating the sandwiches he’d made all by himself. That’s how Lucien chose to live out his days, not alone, awaiting whatever fresh hell his captor prepared for him.

“Jean?”

Matthew’s voice kept Jean from considering her husband’s condition further. She cursed as water spilled over the rim of the overflowing cup and onto her hand. When she turned, Matthew and Mei Lin were both standing behind the table, eyeing her with concern, pity, and wariness.

“I’m fine. It’s just…he must have been so scared.” She thought of the nights both before and after their marriage when his tormented cries woke her in the middle of the night. Even before, when she heard his cries upstairs in her bedroom, Lucien woke to the safety of his own bed.

What did he do, when he woke up alone and in danger, without knowing when he would be alright again?


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jiang relocates and executes the first step in his plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter comes with a violence TW. Nothing explicit, but I'd rather be on the safe side. 
> 
> All my love and gratitude to my beta, escapewithstories <3

April–July 3, 1963

For three weeks, Jiang confined Lucien to his cage. His days passed in half-light, and most nights he slept in fits and bursts. In between night terrors, he forced himself through sets of pushups and sit-ups on the cold floor until he could hardly move. When Jiang brought down Lucien’s sparse meals, he emptied the bucket that served as Lucien’s toilet, and after the first week, he brought a change of clothes. Never once did Jiang speak.

Jiang broke his silence one morning after dropping a passport on Lucien’s bed. The photo inside matched that on Lucien’s real passport, but the name _Mark Denton_ had replaced his.

“Going on holiday?” he asked, closing the passport.

Predictably, Jiang did not smile. “Our work will be more effective in Shanghai.”

With merely a few words, Jiang sucked all the air out of the room. Li and Ying Yue were in Shanghai. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me,” Lucien growled.

Holding up a hand, Jiang said, “My interests lie elsewhere.”

_Hardly a relief_. So far, Lucien had avoided becoming an accessory to murder, but once they arrived in Shanghai, God knows what Jiang would force him to do. If he could escape in transit either to the port or to whatever safehouse Jiang had arranged for in Shanghai…

Jiang waited until the last second to dash those hopes. Standing in the doorway, he cocked an eyebrow. “Before you waste too much energy concocting an escape plan, know that I have friends standing by in Ballarat and Shanghai, and they will act long before you can find help.”

So Lucien spent the voyage to China surrounded by people who could help him, but paralyzed by the fear of harm coming to his girls.

Prior to their arrival, Jiang procured a safehouse, no doubt with help from one of his contacts insane or delusional enough to offer aid. Captivity could hardly be comfortable, but unlike the basement, Lucien’s fortified bedroom was larger, and a barred window gave Lucien a glimpse of the vast forest that surrounded the house like a collar.

Despite Jiang’s threats, Lucien refused to sit idly and wait for Jiang to use him. When he discovered Lucien’s family’s identities and locations, the plan he thought he had in place lost all credibility. The main purpose of such a contingency plan was to keep his family safe from prying operatives, former or current, but since that had failed, he feared what other aspects may have fallen through.

Jiang only allowed Lucien out of his room to use the bathroom down the hall. At first, this leniency shocked Lucien, but the barred bathroom window explained the privilege of privacy. Naturally, Jiang rid the bathroom of anything that he could use as a weapon; he even kept Lucien’s toothbrush in another room until he needed it. Therefore, Lucien quickly eliminated fighting his way out as a method of escape.

He needed time and opportunity, so for weeks, he observed Jiang’s routine as closely as he could. When Jiang first led Lucien through the house, he quickly catalogued the layout—kitchen straight ahead, den to his right, corridor to the bedrooms to the left. Every morning, Lucien gave up on sleep early, well before dawn, so he heard the floorboards creak an hour or so later when Jiang ambled to the kitchen, where he made coffee and breakfast, both of which he brought to Lucien about an hour later. Once or twice a week, Lucien heard a syncopated knock and another voice in the house, usually first thing in the morning or late at night. Since Jiang never ventured out of the house, Lucien assumed that whoever provided their passports and housing brought Jiang the information he needed. Jiang had never been good at making friends, so while Lucien doubted there were many who would help him now, there were enough.

After about four weeks, however, Jiang began to leave the house. Every day at either 7:15 a.m. or 10:35 p.m., the crunch of tires on gravel piqued Lucien’s interest. After a week of observing this pattern and confirming that Jiang’s outings lasted no longer than an hour, he began to plan. Either too arrogant or apathetic, Jiang never altered his routine to catch Lucien in the act.

During their sixth week in China, Jiang surprised Lucien by lingering one morning after dropping off a breakfast. After handing Lucien the cool oatmeal, Jiang laid a thick file on the bed.

“I’ve been wasting your analytic mind, but now I require your input.” Jiang turned and sat in the wooden chair leaned against the wall across from Lucien’s bed.

Lucien hesitated, knowing that once he opened the file, he would take his first step into complicity.

“I know what you’re thinking, Blake, and believe me—I will ask you to do far worse things than open a folder.”

A chill crept up Lucien’s spine. He’d nearly forgotten the casual manner with which men in this line of work address violence, like commenting on the weather or discussing last week’s footie match. Reluctantly, he opened the folder and immediately saw pictures of three different men. Judging from their uniforms, all of them were low-ranking military officers, unsuspecting and insignificant. As he scanned the pages attached to each photo with a paperclip, however, he realized that, after the war, all three had worked for different high-ranking military officers.

“One of these young men has something you want.” Lucien glanced from Jiang to the file. “But you don’t know which one, do you?”

Jiang cocked an eyebrow. “I made no secret of needing your help. My superior officers were very careful to keep me at arms’ length, so I must rely on others to lead me to those responsible. Our first target is low-profile. Regrettably, one of those young men will die for what he knows, not for what he’s done. But his blood will be on others’ hands, not ours.”

Without drawing his gaze from the young men staring at something off-camera, Lucien growled, “Is _that_ how you sleep at night? Blame the deaths you’re responsible for on the higher ups?”

Jiang crossed one ankle over his knee. “At least I sleep.”

This time, Lucien did meet his eyes, two empty, depthless pools. “My sleepless nights have more to do with being a hostage than with not accepting responsibility for what I’ve done.”

To that accusation, Jiang merely shrugged. “The sooner we conclude our business here, the sooner you will have your freedom.”

Again, Lucien marveled at the lunacy of releasing a man who could testify against him. While Jiang’s cool façade remained impenetrable, Lucien suspected that the former operative had not recovered the mind he lost in service to his country. Even during Jiang’s time in the field, his delusions got him into scrapes. His impulsive and unpredictable decisions made him difficult to track, but they also kept his handlers up at night.

Jiang rose and fiddled with the rolled cuff of his left sleeve. “Take a look at the information on each potential target, and tomorrow we will compare notes.”

_Compare notes_ , like comrades. “Fine.” Lucien thumbed through the file, dismissing Jiang as overtly as he could. As he skimmed the pieces of a puzzle he had no desire to solve, Jiang’s threats tortured Lucien.

_All this time we hunted each other without knowing we had the same weakness._

_I’ll take a trip to Ballarat and ensure Jean knows what torture at my hand feels like._

Lucien pressed his palms against his eyes, willing the voice to desist, but nothing could prevent him from seeing the horrors Jiang’s threats could reap. Jean, marred and motionless in their kitchen. Li, face down on the floor of her own home, with one arm outstretched to her daughter, who lay in a pool of her own blood.

No matter the cost, he had to protect them. Only repeating that mantra for the rest of the day allowed him to do Jiang’s bidding.

In lieu of his preferred chalkboard method, Lucien organized his thoughts in piles on the floor. Each young man served a different military officer during the first few years of Jiang’s service to Chinese Intelligence, and each was abruptly transferred in 1957, after the Chinese retired Jiang. Assuming that Jiang’s focus would be on the higher-ups, Lucien focused on the boys and the reason behind each transfer.

Lucien eliminated Guo Xing first, since some of the photos depicted his wife in compromising positions with Xing’s superior, which explained his transfer. Han Zhong and Fa Wong, however, proved harder to distinguish. From what he could tell through the information in the files, their transfers had nothing to do with their personal lives and everything to do with professional advancements. All too normal, but nothing concrete like bank statements to base even an educated guess.

After hours of scouring the same information, Lucien fell back onto his bed and folded his arms over his eyes, behind which a stabbing headache stubbornly persisted. He briefly allowed himself to remember the bleak reality of this situation. The thought of handing either of the boys to Jiang was sickening, but if he couldn’t tell Jiang which one, they would both die. Choosing the lesser of two evils had never satisfied Lucien. He shook his head and as he paced through the labyrinth of names, dates, and faces, he started, once again, from the beginning.

Fa Wong spent his childhood in an unhappy home and, like many boys who can’t see a future different from the miserable present, followed his father into military service without any particular passion for his profession but imbued with steadfast nationalism. However, he excelled quickly, his only deficiency in physical fitness, which made him an ideal candidate for a Chinese general’s aide. After five years in service to General Chu, Wong transferred to his father’s office, a move which Lucien first interpreted as a reward. His own relationship with his father aside, Lucien reconsidered this when he remembered the abusive household in which Wong grew up. If Lucien were going on psychology alone, Wong would be the best choice. Without knowing what a healthy family looked like, what problem would Wong have with concealing the whereabouts of another man’s family?

Though his gut told him that Wong had the information Jiang wanted, Lucien could hardly condemn a man with such circumstantial evidence. While Han Zhong’s life story was far less bleak, he matched Wong in nearly every respect. His transfer sent him deeper into direct contact with intelligence work, which muddied the rest of his record. Jiang must have pulled a miracle out of thin air to locate this phantom.

Frustrated, Lucien reached down and snatched a random sheet of paper, hoping that without a theory to confirm or deny, his mind would open up to other possibilities. To his surprise, the first words he read, _Fu Jin_ , jumped out at him, but he muttered it several times before he placed it.

Closing his eyes, he pictured his superior officer’s office, dim and hot because the air conditioning never worked. After one of Lucien’s longest assignments, he reported this room, only to find it empty. He hadn’t eaten in sixteen hours, and he’d lost count of the days since his last drink of water, so when he moved to sit down, he lost his balance. When he reached out to steady himself, he knocked a stack of papers off the desk. Cursing, he knelt to pick up the papers, and while he never meant to snoop, one of Jiang’s aliases scribbled on a note caught his eye.

_Another inquiry made about Bai Chen’s family. Taken care of by General Jin’s office._

At the time, this note had puzzled Lucien, since he had no idea that Jiang had a family. His boss’s subsequent entrance distracted him from this line of thought, and by the end of the briefing, his exhaustion prevented him from pursuing the matter further.

Opening his eyes, he quickly scanned the page to determine whose file it belonged it.

Fa Wong.

Lucien almost felt the same pang of triumph that descended on him every time he caught a break in a case. Then he remembered what a break in this case would mean. _No matter the cost_ —

No, if he was going to give Jiang what he wanted, the least Lucien could do was confront what his choice meant. It meant the death of a young man who, like Lucien, had followed his orders. It meant committing a crime. It meant placing more value in his loved ones than in someone else’s. It meant inflicting grief on this boy’s mother, the same grief that nearly killed Lucien when he thought he had lost Li forever.

Even if Lucien kept this information to himself, Jiang wouldn’t give up after one wrong answer; he’d simply move on to the next option, the next means to an end. Eventually, so would Lucien. This wouldn’t be the end of his involvement in Jiang’s hunt for vengeance for a harm that could be undone. Lucien had no idea how many lives would be ruined before Jiang had hunted enough, before Lucien could go home.

After another sleepless night, Lucien didn’t touch the cereal Jiang brought. Only when the creak of the chair gave Jiang’s position away did Lucien speak.

“Fa Wong.”

“Why?”

“You first,” Lucien said, finally sitting up in bed. Jiang had moved the chair closer to Lucien’s bed this time, perhaps to make them feel more like partners.

“I had my eye on Zhong,” Jiang admitted, and Lucien nearly smiled at the prospect of beating him at his own game. “Convince me otherwise.”

* * *

On a sweltering July evening, Jiang prepared to pay Fa Wong a visit, and Lucien prepared to execute his plan, now even more important because timing could save Wong’s life. For the past week, whenever Jiang left the house, Lucien weakened the same misshapen link on his chain by nearly crushing it under one of the legs of his bedframe. Once he broke the link, he would use the bedspring he’d removed and straightened to jimmy the lock around his ankle. Unfortunately, he could not do the same to the bolts on the door. Breaking it down would probably take the most time, since he could hardly practice, but even without the adrenaline rush he expected, his late-night exercises had not gone to waste. When he left the house, all he could do was run.

Lucien expected some posturing on Jiang’s part, but when he delivered Lucien’s dinner, he remained characteristically silent. Lucien hoped that he couldn’t hear the thrumming of his heartbeat in his ears as he thought through every step of his scheme over and over. His dinner untouched, Lucien paced a groove in the floor from the bed to the door. This simply had to work. Failure would end in Jiang torturing Lucien within an inch of his life. No matter his other faults, Jiang was not volatile enough to kill a man whom he had convinced himself he needed.

But nothing Jiang could do to Lucien could inflict more pain than seeing his girls suffer.

For a few seconds, he allowed himself to hope, to fantasize about being home with Jean. Closing his eyes, he could almost smell her shampoo as he imagined wrapping her in his arms, could almost taste her as he daydreamed of kissing her until she forgave him for making yet another mess.

No, he could not fail.

And after the chain broke, the cuff opened, the doorframe splintered, and freedom beckoned, he thought he would make it. He could find help, call the police, perhaps save Fa Wong.

Thirty feet into freedom, he heard the shotgun cock.

Needing no prompting, he froze, hands pointed toward heaven.

“Turn around slowly.”

The stranger spoke in heavily accented English, so Lucien, hoping to make his aggressor feel more at ease, responded in Mandarin. “Alright. I’m unarmed.” He cursed himself for not rummaging through the house for a weapon. The cloudy night did nothing for his visibility, but by the silhouette’s posture, Lucien knew the attacker had a sure, steady hold on the gun. “I suppose you’re Jiang’s informant,” Lucien said, struggling to keep his voice light and nonconfrontational. “What’s he told you about me to make the prospect of killing an unarmed man palatable?”

“I’d certainly prefer not to kill you, but if you run, you leave me no choice.” He jerked his head toward the house. “Let’s go.”

As long as Lucien didn’t move, he would be neither closer to nor farther from freedom. Jiang had only left a half an hour before, leaving at least thirty minutes for Lucien to talk his way out. “I just want to go home.”

“So do I, and if I let you go, I will have no home to return to.”

Relieved that this man operated under duress instead of lunacy, Lucien pressed his luck. “He threatens you too, then? You fare no better than I.”

“I owe him my life, but I am no prisoner.” Whoever he was, this man was driven by pride and loyalty, admirable but easily manipulated traits.

“I can understand that,” Lucien said, his raised arms starting to quiver. “But you have to know what he’s doing, and how dangerous it is for everyone involved, and how easily Jiang could lay the blame for his crimes at your feet.”

“You can stall for as long as you like, but this night will end with you back in that house. The only question remaining is whether you go healthy or maimed.” 

“If only Fa Wong had those options,” he snapped. “You claim to have honor enough to fulfill a life-debt, but you don’t bat an eye if it involves the murder of an innocent man.”

At close range, the gun fired so loudly that, for seemingly infinite seconds, Lucien only heard the ringing in his ears. As he ran his hands over his torso to ensure he hadn’t been shot, he noticed a gaping hole in the gravel next to his left foot.

“I refuse to have an ethical debate with a man who spied on my countrymen. This is your last warning.”

Lucien knew what would happen to Jean and Li and Ying Yue if he returned to the house, so while he had hoped against all hope to make it home to Jean, he would make the decision that would keep her safe. “If Jiang knows I tried to flee, my family will pay the price,” he said. “You’re going to have to take me by force or kill me, because I would rather die than leave them at your friend’s mercy.”

Though Lucien still could not see his face, the man’s sigh told Lucien more about him than anything had so far. “You have my word that if you come quietly, your family will be safe.”

Scoffing, Lucien ran a hand through his hair, grown too long and curly over the last three months. “If you’re under the illusion that you have any control over Huan Jiang, you are in for one hell of a shock.”

“And if you think I put myself in this situation without some leverage, then _you’re_ in for one hell of a shock. I can’t stop him from doing what he wants with you, nor do I want to, but despite what you think of me, there’s only so far I’ll go.”

Biting back a retort about the hypocritical nature of those morals, Lucien took one cautious step toward the house. He still had no idea if he could trust this man, but he couldn’t think of an ulterior motive for him to protect Lucien’s family. Sure, Jiang would prefer Lucien alive, but he doubted Jiang’s accomplice would suffer any serious consequences if Lucien died.

Part of him didn’t want to take the chance. His girls’ lives were too precious to gamble with. But he couldn’t bear the thought of Jean finding out that he gave up, no matter how noble his justification. By dying, not only will he have broken his last promise to her, but he will have abandoned her before all hope was lost. Even dead, Lucien still posed a threat to his loved ones because nothing could erase Jiang’s knowledge about who and where they were. Who knows what irrational reaction Jiang would have to Lucien’s death. Jiang never had reacted well to plans that did not go as expected.

“If he hurts them,” Lucien said, his voice darker and more foreboding than he’d heard it in years, “I will kill you both.” Until now, he avoided this rather obvious way to escape because he believed that there was always another way to solve a problem, but now, in the country where he once had no such qualms, in the face of depravity unleashed on his family, he would abandon his principles without a second thought.

In yet another display of this man’s familiarity with the immoral, Jiang’s comrade simply nodded. “Understood.”

For the next hour, longer than Lucien expected, he brooded in his room, where he had been tied to a chair and bound with a new set of chains. He couldn’t deny the fear that left him sweating and nauseated; if Jiang spared Lucien’s family, he would unleash the whole of his ire on his captive. When Lucien closed his eyes, desperate for deeper, more even breaths, he pictured Jiang’s crude instruments and rubber gloves, heard Derek’s muffled screams, felt phantom blood in his mouth.

Grasping for a happy memory to keep him from drowning, Lucien conjured the image of Amelia and Jean on the floor on Christmas morning, surrounded by gifts and love and wishes fulfilled. Christopher and his family had spent last Christmas in Ballarat, with his mother, for the first time in nearly a decade, and Jean spent the whole day doting on her son and granddaughter as she’d longed to, as a grandmother should. Lucien had assembled Amelia’s dollhouse, on which he spent far too much money, and played with her as long as a three-year-old’s attention span allowed.

Only when Jiang and his friend—Baako, according to Jiang’s raised voice—shouted at each other did the spell break. He tried to concentrate on their furious exchange, to learn more about them and what he could use to set them against each other, but he could hardly plan with such a bleak immediate future before him. When Jiang thundered into the room, his eyes wild and clothes covered in blood splatter, Lucien forced himself to look Jiang in the eye, rather than dwell on the case he carried, swallowing his fear and praying that Jiang couldn’t smell it.

“When I’m done with you,” Jiang hissed, the latches of his case snapping open, “you’ll wish Baako had shot you.”


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After everyone goes to bed, Jean prepares for her impending departure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year, and, more importantly, happy Jeanuary! :)
> 
> I recently looked back at her notes on an older draft of this chapter, and I'd just like to say thank god escapewithstories is here.
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and that your new year is off to a good start!

April 3, 1964

While the news of Lucien’s survival eliminated the possibility of sleep for Jean, Mei Lin had been traveling for days and nearly collapsed as she rose from her chair at midnight. Jean helped her up the stairs to her old bedroom, leaving Matthew to brood in the kitchen. After fussing over Mei Lin and berating herself for not noticing her exhaustion earlier, Jean eased the door shut and leaned against it, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. In six hours, she and Mei Lin would embark on the journey to bring Lucien home. One would expect the thought to send her over the moon, but her shock tempered her joy. Naturally, her relief nearly overwhelmed her, but she wouldn’t be happy until she saw him, held him, ensured he was truly safe.

Taking a deep breath, she braced herself to face Matthew, but she returned to the kitchen to find his chair empty and the dishes sitting in the sink. With a sigh, Jean flipped the light switch, leaving the dishes for later. As she locked up for night, she realized that leaving for China without a word would disturb her sons, not to mention Danny and Charlie. Until she could sleep, she would occupy her time in the study, writing to the boys and drafting a letter to send to the city council.

Two months ago, she had decided to use the study instead of walking past it with her heart in her chest every day. As she sat in Lucien’s chair and reached for one of his pens, she thought of the studio. To pack for both herself and Lucien, she needed to unlock that room. For months, all his belongings had been hidden in the room that had seen more love than any other, and she slept in Lucien’s old bedroom.

When she first decided to move out of the studio, the thought of moving back upstairs, where Jean Beazley had spent so many years, terrified her. At the time of his disappearance, she had just begun to feel confidence in her identity as Jean Blake, the doctor’s wife, only to be thrust back into the town gossip— _poor Jean, widowed again_. In his old room, she could be close to him without being confronted by all the happy memories of experiences she thought she would never enjoy again. Even now, knowing that Lucien would be home soon, Jean had no idea if she possessed the strength to brave the studio.

But for now, with another task at hand, she could avoid it. Her letters to her sons betrayed nothing of her feelings, only expressed concern for theirs and assured them, as only a mother can, that all would be well. Since Charlie and Danny cared for Lucien more than her sons ever could, Jean gave them as much information as possible, promising that she would contact them with more information at her earliest opportunity. As much as she wanted Matthew to come with her to China, one advantage of his staying in Australia was that he could talk to the boys in person, fill any gaps her letters left. With Mattie in London, she thought a long-distance phone call would be worth the cost, and she made a note to dispatch Matthew for that duty as well. To the city council she clinically explained her absence, but as she wrote the words, _My husband has been found alive in China_ , to a group of stuffy men who resented her presence in their corner of a man’s world, she could no longer avoid the question by focusing on the feelings of others. Would the man she brought back from China be the man she married?

As soon as she finished the thought, she shook her head and scribbled her next sentence. Of course, he would be different; he’d spent the last year as a hostage, likely confined to one room, reliving trauma while he endured more. Much of the progress he made over the last four years would likely be gone, but as always, Jean would be there to guide him through every reintegration, every bad night of banging on the piano, every breakdown, every nightmare.

Right now, she couldn’t consider what she would do if he found more consolation in the bottle than in her.

Her first task complete, she returned to the next job at hand, packing her necessities. Returning Lucien’s pen to the cup on his desk, Jean rose and pushed his chair in and straightened papers on the desk. Though she had no idea when he would next use the study, she couldn’t resist the urge to make sure everything was just so. She smiled, thinking about working in the study with him.

For the first half hour, she skittered around her bedroom, lugging her largest suitcase out from under her bed, digging through drawers, tossing her bare necessities into the case, packing and unpacking as she decided what to bring for Lucien and what she could do without to make him more comfortable. She started a mental list of things to retrieve from the studio: basic clothing, his Brylecreem and shaving kit, the novel he’d been reading when he left, his softest pair of pajamas. She need not retrieve his dressing gown, which hung on the back of the chair in front of her vanity. She refused to part with everything of Lucien’s, no matter how unbearable the pain. The silk skimmed over her fingers and palms as she lifted it to her face, hoping to find a trace of his scent. Jean could only have one miracle at a time; it had stopped smelling like him months ago.

After triple checking the contents of her suitcase, Jean opened her bedside table. She smiled tenderly at the unfinished knit booties for Christopher’s five-month-old baby boy, who had outgrown the first pair she sent, Next to the booties for a grandson she had worried that Lucien would never meet, lay the cold key with the red ribbon at the bottom of the drawer. She hesitated only briefly before grasping the key and sliding the drawer shut. Lucien needed what was in that room, and now that she knew he was alive, it shouldn’t hurt so much to go back. Biting her lip, she heaved the suitcase off her bed and left her room without another thought. She focused on the weight of the case so that she didn’t peer down the hallway at the door that Lucien never would have wanted her to lock. Her hand shook so much that she had to set down the suitcase and use both hands to fit the key in the lock.

When the door swung open, the moonlight shone on the furniture covers, and a rush of stale, cold air nearly knocked Jean off her feet. All those years ago, when Lucien finally opened his mother’s favorite room, it had been morning, hazy and dim, but promising. Now, the only light coming from the hallway behind her, Jean felt only dread at the thought of Lucien seeing this room shut up again. Leaving the suitcase in the doorway, she rushed into the room and yanked the sheet off the couch where they retired in the evenings, where they cuddled and kissed. Choking on the dust particles and ignoring the tears welling in her eyes, Jean folded the sheet and tossed it by the fireplace. She attacked the dresser next, where pictures of his daughter, granddaughters, and wife hid under the sheet. Suddenly, packing wasn’t nearly as important as cleaning the room so that Lucien could truly come home. How could she expect him to stay in his old room? Would he be angry? Would he think she had moved on? Would he think she had given up? 

_No, never, my darling_.

The cover on the bed must have gotten tucked under the mattress on the other side because no matter how hard she tugged, it wouldn’t budge. Groaning in frustration, Jean stalked around the other side of the bed and heaved the bed up with one hand and yanked the sheet out with the other. She cursed as her hip caught the corner of Lucien’s nightstand, knocking it over and spilling the contents of the drawer. As Jean knelt down to retrieve the knickknacks Lucien cluttered his drawer with, she remembered what Mei Lin said. Apparently, part of the reason that Lucien had taken so long to resurface was that Jiang threatened his family, for which Lucien would do anything. Obviously, the police would have no choice but to attribute Lucien’s involvement to duress, but convincing Lucien of his innocence would be another battle. For years, he blamed himself for the atrocities the war inflicted on his family, and despite her best efforts, only he could exonerate himself. If he aided and abetted multiple murders, he may never come out of the stifling fog of guilt.

Resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, Jean wished she could cry, relieve the ache in her chest. “Oh, Lucien.” At first, she thought that she felt a sob in her throat, but she bolted to the bathroom just in time to empty her stomach contents in the toilet. An ill-advised inhale sent her into a coughing frenzy, and just as she got her breathing under control, she heard Matthew on the other side of the bathroom door, hanging slightly ajar.

“Jean? You alright?”

Leaning back against the cool tile wall, Jean closed her eyes, willing her churning stomach to still. “I’m fine.”

Matthew pushed the door open with his cane and leaned against the doorframe. “I don’t think you are.”

With a scowl, Jean tried to push herself off the bathroom floor, but when another wave of nausea crashed over her, she leaned forward to put her head between her legs instead. Embarrassed to be found in any other way but collected and in control, she didn’t look up when she heard the tap of Matthew’s cane, the water running in the sink, or the legs of the stool under the bathroom vanity scraping across the floor. Only when Matthew placed a cold washcloth to the back of her neck did she lift her head. Tucked in his maroon robe, Matthew sat on the stool with the pink cushion and ornate flower carvings on its legs, and offered a glass of water.

When Jean thanked him, he cleared his throat. “I’d bring you some whiskey, but that doesn’t seem like a good idea at the moment.”

Jean smiled into her glass. “Good call, Superintendent.” She pressed the cloth harder against her neck, welcoming the chill. “How’s Alice?”

Matthew gawked the abrupt change in topic. “ _How’s Alice?_ ”

“What, you don’t want to think about something else for two minutes?”

Grumbling, Matthew reached for his drink, resting on the bathroom counter. “She’s…good. Don’t know how she’ll be when she finds out Lucien is alive.”

The bitterness in his voice surprised Jean until she realized what Matthew was thinking. “It’s not like he’s going to demand his old job back, Matthew,” she sighed. “I don’t even know when he’ll be well enough to practice medicine.”

Staring across the room at a tub built for two, Matthew shook his head. “How do I even tell her? I mean, if this is how _we_ react… Christ, Jean, she’s been mourning his death for longer than any of us.”

“I know.”

Matthew rambled on as if he hadn’t heard her. “This is just like Lucien, you know. I was thinking about popping the question, but in comes Lucien, fresh from another bloody brush with death.”

His confession left Jean wondering just how much he had to drink. “Matthew, how wonderful!” she gasped. “You don’t think it’s too soon?”

“Well, even if I did, I’ve got to wait now,” Matthew said before downing the rest of his drink.

After just a few hours, Jean had nearly forgotten how good it felt to smile. “Matthew Lawson, wipe that frown off your face. You’re in _love_!” Her smile widened when she realized that for the first time in a year, she could share good news with her husband.

Without his whiskey glass to hide behind, Matthew couldn’t conceal the grin teasing the corners of his mouth. “Alright, don’t wake all of Ballarat. And she could always say no. She’s a modern woman, you know.”

“Nonsense. She loves you.”

“You know love isn’t always enough.” Before Jean could process the smart of Matthew’s quip, he realized his mistake. “I didn’t mean it that way—”

“In what way, then?” Jean snapped.

Matthew sighed, staring through the bottom of his empty glass. “I just meant that… you and Lucien were in love long before you got married, long before he even proposed. And God knows you two faced every obstacle in the book, but I don’t…want to wait if I know that this is what we both want.”

“She’ll want that even when Lucien comes home,” Jean insisted.

“Alice needs stability to make these kinds of decisions,” Matthew said. “When Lucien comes home, he’ll want his job back, and her professional stability will be gone.”

Jean sighed. “Matthew, it’s Alice’s job now. Lucien wouldn’t dream of taking it from her, and even if he tried, he would have no precedent.”

“Just because you have a seat on the council doesn’t mean that suddenly every bloke in Australia isn’t going to prefer a male police surgeon.”

Pushing herself off the cold floor, Jean stood in front of Matthew with her arms crossed. “I know you’re still angry at him, and I respect your position, but you’ve got to stop thinking like this. Do you think after a year of being someone else’s puppet that he’ll be fit to run around solving murders or performing autopsies? Do you think that he would begrudge Alice her success, after all she’s been through and fought for?”

“Do you think that after all that, he’ll be the same person he was when he left?” Matthew countered. Apparently, it took Lucien’s return for Matthew to remember to treat Jean like a person instead of a porcelain doll, but Jean didn’t fancy hearing her worst fears come from someone else’s lips.

“Of course not. He’ll be broken. Again.” At the sound of her quivering voice, Jean covered her mouth with the back of her hand and closed her eyes, determined not to cry again. The time for tears had passed. With Lucien coming home, needing her for everything, she could hardly burst into fits and risk him worrying about her too. With a firm shake of her head, Jean returned her focus to Matthew, who sat with his forearms on his knees and his eyes fixed on her, as if she knew what to do any better than he did.

“He’ll be broken, and he’ll need us, Matthew. There’s no use in pretending it won’t be hard for all of us because it will. Whether he came back or not, it was never going to be easy. But for heaven’s sake, Matthew. He’s _alive_.” If only she could spend hours simply reveling in that truth instead of anticipating every problem to come. The last year had not been the epitaph of their story, but an interlude. “Do you have any idea how lucky we are? Did you ever think this nightmare would end in any other way but in pain?” 

Matthew squinted at Jean for only a few seconds before filling the tense silence. “I know. I’m sorry I’ve been selfish.”

Jean smiled sadly, remembering all the times she explained Lucien’s behavior away because she saw in him what no one else was willing to overlook. “No. You just love her.” She waited for Matthew to clear his throat of inconvenient emotions before adding, “She knows, doesn’t she? You’ve told her?”

“Of course, I’ve told her,” Matthew said. “I did learn a thing or two from your husband.” Leaning heavily on his cane and glancing at the bathroom door, he rose. “You’ve got a long journey tomorrow. You should get some sleep.”

Knowing he meant well, Jean refrained from rolling her eyes. “Of course.”

Matthew rested his free hand on Jean’s shoulder and squeezed. “I wish I could go with you.”

Since she arrived, Mei Lin had been Jean’s rock, but for months Matthew had steered the raft keeping her afloat. She could have survived the last year on her own; for seventeen years, she worked and raised her boys and saved and made every decision alone. _This time_ , she thought, pressing through the ache of having to clarify which heartbreak, _I didn’t have to go it alone_. While her friends hardly diminished her grief, they lived it with her instead of pitying her from their own happy hearths.

Now, at the end, she would have to go without them. 

“So do I, Matthew. So do I.”

* * *

Jean did everything but sleep. With only a few hours before sunrise, sleep would do more harm than good, and heaven forbid she and Mei Lin both overslept. No, better to keep busy, to prepare. She spent over an hour in the bedroom, trying to bring some warmth back into the room but knowing it would only return with Lucien. She accepted that he would have to know what she’d done to cope with his absence, and in all likelihood, he would understand because he would blame himself for everything, even what he could not control. As she smoothed the last of the wrinkles out of the fresh sheets, Jean was satisfied with the space, knowing that both she and Lucien would heal here.

After cleaning and packing, it was nearly two in the morning. With three hours to fill, she returned to the kitchen to wash the dishes. Comforted by this familiar part of her routine, she thought ahead to the upcoming week. Thankfully she’d just gone to the shops yesterday, so Matthew would have the makings for a sandwich to take to lunch while she was gone. He could fend for himself at breakfast, but for dinner, he and Alice were both helpless. Until daybreak, she cooked compulsively—potato soup, salads, chicken salad, anything that Matthew could stick in the fridge or reheat.

When first light filtered through the sunroom into the kitchen, Jean gasped, eyes flying to the clock. Thankfully, she still had an hour, just enough time to make some eggs and toast. After filling the kettle, she strained to hear any sound of Mei Lin, debating whether to check on a grown woman who is perfectly capable of rising on time. Shoving her anxiety aside, Jean lit the stove and started on Mei Lin’s eggs—fried, not scrambled, if memory served.

“Good morning.”

Jean looked to the doorway and found Mei Lin lingering. After a night of fretting and planning and crying, Jean drew strength from Mei Lin, from her sturdy posture and warm smile. Between them, there was so much suffering, so much loss, but here they were, ready for a triumph.

“Good morning.”


	9. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jiang doesn't make the same mistake twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: This chapter comes with a trigger warning for violence and brief description of torture (at the end).

July–September 1963

For days, Lucien wakes from unwilling sleep in a pool of his own sweat, blood, and bodily fluids. Chains biting at his ankles and wrists, arms cramping from their fixed position above his head, broken ribs choking his organs, gashes and cuts healing poorly, he begs to return to the nightmares. His mind and body vie for the most pain, wake or sleep, stabbing agony or psychological torment. Either way, he tumbles, with no way of breaking his fall.

When the chains disappear, he longs to stand, to pace, to move freely, but his limbs don’t obey, and his muscles scream, and the cold water tossed on him in lieu of a shower makes his joints ache. It’s hours before he finds the will to roll onto his side, to take the first stab at sitting upright, and it takes him far too long to recover from it. Arms tingling from disuse, he pulls them to his chest and lays one palm flat on the bed with an intent to rise. _Push, Blake. It can’t be any worse._ It’s the first coherent thought he’s had for ages, and it’s a lie.

He’s lost track of time, but once the meals reappear, he tries his best to keep up with the days and nights, to create a schedule for himself to regain his sanity. The less time he spends in the clutches of his subconscious, the better. It takes days, but eventually he wakes and sleeps at normal hours of the day and determines that he spent nearly the entire month of July immobile. During his waking hours, he monitors the state of his poorly healing wounds and thinks of Jean. Despite the months spent without her, Lucien has no trouble recalling with perfect clarity every feature, every wrinkle, every scar, every freckle. How he longs to dream of her laugh, her body, her embrace.

Alas, as soon as unconsciousness claims him, Lucien is tortured. Sometimes he dreams of the camp, of the stench of dead bodies so potent that he has no chance of remembering that this was only a dream. Dozens of them, toppled like dominos on the noxious soil. The weight of a rifle heavy on his back, Lucien forces himself to look at the faces of each. Some he recognizes from memories he’d rather repress. Some he knows cannot be there—his father, his mother, Doug Ashby. If not this horror, another. His home in Ballarat in flames, screams of everyone he loves, everyone he can’t save, overcoming the roar of the blaze. Li and Mei Lin trapped below deck on a sinking boat.

_No more_ , he decides one night, hiding from sleep. Grasping for control and desperate for a drink to numb the pain, he returns to his only remaining vice, obsessing over how to get home.

* * *

In early August, Jiang visited Lucien for the first time since he nearly tortured him to death. Given a month to calm down, Jiang bore no trace of the rage he unleashed that night. Though, since he had been sending Baako in with Lucien’s meals, Lucien knew that it had cost him dearly to lose control.

Today, however, seated in the chair he brought to replace the one he’d broken during Lucien’s torture, Jiang crossed his ankle over his knee and gestured to Lucien. “You look nearly healthy today. The meals are helping?”

Lucien, who couldn’t summon the energy to sit up in bed and greet the man who had put him in such a state, scoffed. “If your goal is to keep me just on this side of alive, yes, the food is helping _immensely_.”

“I’d be more concerned about you if you did not answer in your typical insipid fashion.”

“Concerned? How touching. Wish you would have been more concerned while you broke three of my ribs,” Lucien snarled.

“Not as much as I wish you had learned from your imprisonment what happens to men who run.” Jiang veered from his usual monotone to something like the clipped tones of irritation. “If you prefer, next time I’ll take it out on your family, as I originally intended.”

To this, Lucien had no snarky reply. He held his breath, eyes fixed on a mold spot on the ceiling, willing himself not to give Jiang the satisfaction of watching his victim sweat. “You expect me to take your word that they’re safe?”

“Yes, but since I know you won’t, I took the liberty of procuring some proof for you.”

Lucien stared at Jiang, terrified of what “proof” he may have.

“Don’t look so petrified.” Jiang reached for a folder laying on a pile of clean clothes on the floor. “It’s been a long time since I used appendages as proof of life.” Instead of offering Lucien the folder, however, Jiang perused the contents himself. “I would have killed your granddaughter Amelia first. Maximum damage. Pain for you, your wife, your wife’s son, most certainly for Amelia.”

As he sat up, Lucien felt nothing but the thud of his racing pulse.

“Baako convinced me that if I truly wanted to enact justice for my family, that I should show mercy to yours,” Jiang said. “I have to say that I regret my decision. For the first week, we weren’t sure that you would live.”

“What does it matter?” Lucien snapped. “You know where your son is. You don’t need me to find him.

You don’t even need me to _seek justice for your family_. Or can you not blackmail Baako into helping you commit murders?”

Jiang cocked his head with an almost amused glint in his eye. “You think me without principle, Blake, but if I have a choice, I honor a man’s convictions. Baako is only willing to help me to a certain extent. He’s young. There’s still hope for him to come out of our line of work unscathed.”

In the midst of the terror of Huan Jiang was a sad truth: he could have been someone else if only he had done something else for a living. Even acknowledging and accepting what he became, Jiang wanted to shield others from a similar fate. Perhaps he thought Lucien too far gone to save.

If Lucien helped take yet another life, perhaps he was. 

“In the interest of keeping the authorities unaware, we will not act until September.” Any compassion Jiang expressed was quickly buried beneath his usual indifference. “Until then, we strategize, and you get back into fighting form. I cannot drag a scraggly white man into town wearing bloody clothes, looking black and blue, and smelling like a rat.”

Bile rose in Lucien’s throat. “I’m going with you this time?”

“Last time, I was nearly caught by a passerby in the hallway outside the lieutenant’s apartment. I need a lookout.” The toothless smile he gave Lucien did not reach his eyes; it only darkened them. “And I know you will not make another catastrophic mistake.”

_I would have killed your granddaughter Amelia first._ Sweet Amelia, with her mother’s buoyant curls, her father’s bashful smile, her grandmother’s eyes. “No, I don’t think I will.” Lucien gripped the edge of the mattress until his knuckled whitened.

Jiang pulled the keyring off his belt loop and, to Lucien’s shock, handed them to his captive. Freedom dangled from the fingertips belonging to the hands that could crush Lucien’s every reason for living.

He held freedom in his hands only long enough to realize the pain it would cost him to unlock his shackles.

Jiang handed Lucien the stack of folded clothes and the folder. “The proof I promised.”

The keys jangled as they fell from Lucien’s hand and onto the carpet. Hands shaking, Lucien opened the folder, bracing for the worst.

_Li_.

The camera captured his daughter’s smile, a gift she hadn’t bestowed on her father since her childhood. Li had so much of her mother in her, but Lucien swore he saw a glimmer of his genes in her face when she grinned. Ying Yue, his beautiful granddaughter who he’d never met, sat on her mother’s lap, holding a children’s book that Lucien had sent for her third birthday.

When he looked up to confront Jiang about daring to go near his family, Jiang was gone.

Swiping hot tears from his cheeks, Lucien laid the photo aside and braced himself for the next photo.

_Amelia_.

The kitchen frame slightly obscured the view in the next photo, but Lucien could see Amelia playing with her dolls at the kitchen table while Ruby set the table for lunch. Ruby had always been a slight girl, so when Lucien saw the bump at her midsection, his certainty sent his hand to his mouth. A baby, about five months along by the looks of Ruby. The happiness he knew he should have felt was eclipsed by the terror of the little life being snuffed out before it truly began. Would Christopher note any strange men or women lurking in the neighborhood? No, why should he? He’s supposed to be living the life he had built for himself and his family, anticipating the arrival of his child, not looking over his shoulder because of his stepfather’s recklessness.

Gritting his teeth, he placed the photo next to Li and Ying Yue’s.

_Jean_.

A sob tore its way through him as he touched her glossy face, devoid of any joy he expected to find in light of the expansion of their family. She sat alone in the sunroom, knitting needles idle in her lap, eyes fixed, unseeing, on the garden. The familiarity of her expression broke Lucien’s heart, for he had not seen such resignation and depression in her face since Mei Lin came to Ballarat. After he proposed to Jean, Lucien promised himself to never hurt her again. Then he wrote the affidavit against her wishes, but her love for him enabled her to find the strength to forgive him. When he slid the wedding band on her finger, promising to have and to hold her till death do them part, he couldn’t think of a reason he’d ever want to let go.

_What have I done?_

* * *

Over the next several weeks, despite his posturing, Jiang did not allow Lucien to roam free. He still spent his days bound by a chain that allowed him to pace his room but not reach the door. Part of Lucien rejoiced at the lack of opportunity to take Jiang’s life. Some nights, after his injuries had healed enough for him to toss and turn, murder seemed his only option. The drive to protect his family and to get home to them occupied his every thought, and his previously unchecked impulses led to an impatience and rage than nearly overwhelmed him. The night Baako apprehended Lucien, rage almost won out.

Now, when those moments came, he turned to Jean for guidance. Jean, who he would never see again if he were convicted not only of Jiang and Baako’s murders but also of Fa Wong’s, which apparently remained unsolved. Jean, whose life with him would be tainted by sins committed not for queen and country, but for _her_. No, he had put her through enough. He would rather play the long game, without any guarantee of victory, than come out of bondage a shadow of the man Jean married.

Besides, if his trust did not prove misplaced, freedom might be closer than he thought.

Though Lucien hoped to use Baako to manipulate Jiang or vice versa, Baako’s role in this hit kept him from the house. He rarely came by anymore, and Jiang never left. Since Jiang wanted to lay low to avoid suspicion, Lucien suspected that Baako’s job was to keep tabs on the local law enforcement’s progress in Lieutenant Fong’s murder investigation.

Jiang and Lucien spent most of August planning. Executing the next target, Major Cong Ruan, a higher-ranking military official, challenged them on many fronts. Jiang had gained entry to Fong’s apartment by playing the part of a man coming to surprise an old friend, which both accounted for his presence in the building and gave him a mundane enough cover to be unremarkable. According to the information Baako provided, the major’s residence would not provide Jiang and Lucien with such easy entry and inconspicuous presence. Also, unlike Fong, Ruan did not live alone. Determined to protect the people he deemed innocent by his convoluted logic, Jiang insisted on waiting until Ruan’s wife was not home. Finding that window of opportunity cost them two more weeks, but it solved most of the logistical issues.

They would strike on the night of September 13, while the major’s wife visited Hong Kong for her mother’s birthday.

Lucien had always thrived under pressure, so naturally, his plan only took a definite shape once he had a mere nine days to form it. Since Jiang worked so hard to keep the authorities from making connections between the murders, Lucien’s best chance would be in leaving a trail. The arrangements Lucien made years ago would be worthless until he could make his presence known in China. Matthew could only do so much from Ballarat, and if Jiang had left no evidence for the police in Sydney to find, the trail would be cold by now. All his hope lay in the letter he posted outside the Acacia, and after so long in captivity, he’d begun to lose that hope. His thwarted escape resulted from his frustration with waiting for someone to rescue him. Once he could feel anything other than agony, he had felt shame at his rash, desperate bravado.

Only one person had cause for suspicion regarding Lucien’s disappearance, so Lucien’s cries for help had to be overt enough to catch his ally’s attention and subtle enough to keep Jiang from catching on. That meant waiting, at the expense of human lives, with a man who spent nearly half his life living a lie. Lucien had no idea if he possessed the strength to sacrifice his morals and his humanity, but it didn’t matter. He would do what he could to minimize the hell Jiang planned to unleash not only on his victims but also on their families. If he could save only one of God knows how many men Jiang deemed unworthy of life, perhaps he could live with himself. 

He almost believed it until he heard Ruan’s screams.

The day of the strike, they surveilled the house for hours in Jiang’s vehicle. When Ruan’s wife left, she took the last hope of her husband’s survival with her. Under perfect circumstances, perhaps she could have escaped, gone for help, described the intruders to the authorities. Instead, they watched a clueless young officer load Mrs. Ruan’s expensive luggage into the trunk of a military car and drive away from the danger he had no doubt been discharged to watch for.

Jiang had made the conditions of Lucien’s presence clear—stay close, stay quiet, stay alert. So he watched as Jiang glided over the hardwood floors, blended in with every shadow, and apprehended his sleeping prey with sickeningly swift, soundless moves. Lucien tried to avoid eye contact with Ruan, one victim he knew he could not save. Still, with every shift of the light from a wind-blown branch or a passing headlight, Lucien hoped that perhaps a colleague wanted to drop off papers for Ruan to sign, or that a nosy neighbor had seen them break in and called the police. Even in this desolate situation, hope mocked him.

As much as he hated himself for it, Lucien counted on Ruan’s demise for his own plan to work. Unfortunately, since Jiang searched Lucien daily, he would have to find a clue to leave behind in this room.

Under the guise of keeping watch, Lucien paced, scanning for anything he could use, wishing he couldn’t hear every sickening sound emanating from the bed. Judging by the weakness of Ruan’s cries, Lucien was running out of time. Either the major would lose consciousness and no longer demand Jiang’s attention, or he would talk and shortly thereafter lose his life. On his next pass, his gaze fell on a pen and a folded sheet of stationary on Mrs. Ruan’s nightstand. The nightstand, however, was too close to Jiang to reach it without being noticed. He needed an excuse to get close—

“Jiang, wait.”

Jiang’s head snapped up, eyes wild and jaw set. “I told you to stay quiet.”

“He’s going to be permanently quiet if you don’t take a break soon.” He took two cautious steps toward the bed, where Ruan lay bloodied and half-conscious. “There’s only so much the human body can take.”

A vein in Jiang’s neck twitched, but otherwise he did not move. “I’m aware.”

“Are you? Because it looks to me like you’re getting carried away.” _Take a breath. Don’t be too insistent_. “If you want this man to get you one step closer to your family, let me take a look at him, make sure you don’t kill him before you get what you want.” For the few seconds it took Jiang to respond, Lucien didn’t dare breathe.

With a stiff nod, Jiang stepped away from Ruan and turned to the briefcase that held all his devices. Slowly, Lucien approached the bed from the opposite side, thankful for the small mercy of Ruan being restrained in the middle of the bed.

He had two options. One, lunge at Jiang with the pen and hope that Jiang didn’t reach the knife at his hip first. Two, scribble a brief message on Mrs. Ruan’s stationary. Neither seemed feasible at the moment, with Jiang’s eyes darting back and forth between Lucien and his case, but only one bought him more time.

Kneeling on the bed, he felt the major’s pooling blood soak through his pants. With Ruan’s blood on him and his fluttering pulse under Lucien’s fingertips, he couldn’t hide from the depravity of his plan. No matter that the major would not survive no matter what Lucien did—he had been relying on this man’s death, however inevitable, to save himself. Swallowing the bile in his throat, he forced himself to look into the eyes of the man whose face would haunt him forever. Despite his weakening pulse, Ruan’s eyes were wide and pleading, begging Lucien to help him.

Even if Lucien risked everything by snatching the pen and plowing it into Jiang’s neck, praying he hit the carotid artery, it would not incapacitate him quickly enough to avoid being gutted by the knife at Jiang’s hip. Then he would most certainly be dead, and if Lucien missed, Jiang would slit Ruan’s throat before fleeing the house.

So he closed his eyes and pushed himself off the bed. Before he turned around, he swiped the pen and paper off the nightstand and slipped them into his back pocket, just before Jiang looked to him for an update. “You can’t inflict any more wounds with the knife. If he loses too much more blood, it’ll be over. His pulse is dangerously low, breathing shallow. Tread lightly.” A car horn outside drew Lucien’s attention to the window, but he soon identified the noise as a skirmish between two drivers.

Jiang continued.

Lucien anticipated the major’s next cry, so when he tore off a piece of paper about the size of his pocket watch, the major’s anguish drowned out the ripping sound.

But now the major was talking. When Lucien heard a surname buried in Ruan’s next wail, he knew he didn’t have much time. Wiping his sweaty palms on his dirty slacks, he willed his hands to stop shaking. _Fa Qin_. _VX1748_. In the right hands, that would be enough. With the stench of burned flesh stinging his nostrils, he seized his chance, scrawling his brief missive and slipping it up his sleeve. But he couldn’t be caught with the instruments—it was a miracle Jiang didn’t notice that they were missing from the nightstand. Pulse thrumming in his palms, he eyed his next target, the bureau across from the bed. Only unintelligible screams and static shock filled the room now, so on his next pass, Lucien once again risked it all by lifting his arm to drop the pen and paper on top of the bureau.

Jiang was too busy sending electricity through Ruan’s brain to notice.

When the sickening sizzle and crack of Jiang’s instruments ceased, the silence held a weight it hadn’t before.

“Let me check for a pulse.”

Jiang nearly snickered. “I’m thorough.”

“I’m a doctor, Jiang. Humor me.” He bit back a sigh of relief when Jiang shrugged and began packing up. _Forgive me_ , he thought as he shook out his sleeve and let his clue settle under Ruan’s lifeless neck.


	10. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mei Lin and Jean have a long-overdue conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short update, but I'll make up for it later :) Again, thank you all for the reviews--they mean everything to me. 
> 
> Friendly reminder that escapewithstories is a goddess.

April 3, 1964

With a gasp, Jean sat up straight in her bus seat, her forehead cool from its former resting place against the window. Remnants of her dream of Adelaide, of churches and beaches and languid kisses, lingered as the chill on her skin faded. A hand grasped hers, and for a moment, she thought that when she looked over, she would see Lucien gazing down at her as he had the day he chased after her.

“Jean?”

While Mei Lin’s voice had been so comforting over the last twelve hours, now it doused the last hints of felicity from her dream.

Jean smiled sheepishly. “I’m fine. Just disoriented. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“You needed it,” Mei Lin said, letting go of Jean’s hand.

Patting down her curls and smoothing out the wrinkles in her blouse, Jean admitted that Mei Lin had a point. With six more hours on the bus and another eleven hours in the air, their journey would have been draining even if Jean had slept the night before. “How long was I asleep?”

Mei Lin rolled her neck from side to side, stretching tense muscles. “About five hours.”

“Do you want to sit here for the rest of the drive?” Jean asked, already reaching below her seat for her purse. “It would be easier for you to sleep if you—” 

“No, thank you,” Mei Lin said. “I’m too anxious to sleep while traveling.”

Ashamed for leaving Mei Lin to suffer her anxiety alone, Jean broached a topic that she hoped would please them both. “What can you tell me about your granddaughter? Li was so kind to send me a photograph at Christmas. She’s a beautiful child.”

At the mention of a child so dear to her, Mei Lin beamed. “Ying Yue is so like Li.” Despite her smile, her voice carried a melancholy borne from years of missed opportunities. “She is only five, but she has such fire, such curiosity about the world. And she is so loving. I had forgotten—” Her voice broke, and as she took a few breaths to maintain her composure, Jean’s hand found its way to Mei Lin’s shoulder. “I had forgotten what a gift innocent, unconditional love is. She knows nothing about the past, and when she looks at me, she sees only someone who loves her.”

For a woman who spent nearly two decades living a nightmare, such simplicity and affection must have been more precious than anything. “There’s nothing else she should see, Mei Lin.” When Mei Lin only smiled sadly, Jean recognized this as a sore subject and tried again to lighten the mood. “Has she—I don’t suppose she’s met Lucien?” Only after the words left her mouth did she realize her question could have the opposite effect of what she intended. 

Thankfully, the light returned to Mei Lin’s face. “The day before I left, Li came to visit him for the first time. Since Gen is…not at home, she brought Ying Yue with her.” She drew an unsteady breath. “Lucien had been in the hospital for a week, but that was the first time he smiled.”

The next breath she took filled her lungs to bursting. Seeing his daughter after six years and meeting his granddaughter would have lit up Lucien’s whole world. Whatever confusion Li felt about her relationship with her father, she apparently inherited his capacity for compassion. 

“I never thought that…” Mei Lin worried at her bottom lip. “After all this time, our family, fractured as it may be, is together. I never thought I would see that.”

Placing a hand on Mei Lin’s forearm, Jean remembered Lucien’s tearful declaration following the closing of a particularly disheartening case. _Children just want to be with their parents_. “I’m so happy for you, Mei Lin.”

Underneath her ensuing smile lingered a confusion Jean associated with Mei Lin’s last visit to Ballarat, when the world wanted them to be enemies. The web in which Derek Alderton ensnared Mei Lin had been designed for division, but no matter how she suffered during those dreadful weeks, Jean never hated Mei Lin. While the correspondence they began when Lucien disappeared had never been intimate, the friendly tone of their exchanged allowed Jean to hope that they had moved past what happened, as best they could. But no matter what they felt now, Jean had never answered Mei Lin’s question that day in the sunroom. _Do you hate me?_

“I was not sure you would be so pleased.” Despite the shame expressed in her tone, she did not shy away from Jean’s gaze. “You have every right to resent me.”

Mei Lin had spent seventeen years in volatility, without knowing the fate of any members of her family. For seventeen years, she was made to live in terror, rebuke, and violence, and when she finally grasped at freedom with calloused hands, it came at a price, the payment of which she had not yet forgiven herself for. After all of this, she still thought she deserved animosity.

“Mei Lin, even before you brought Lucien back to me, I never resented you. You endured more than anyone should have been able to survive, and when you clawed your way out, you did what you thought you had to do to save your family.” When Mei Lin averted her gaze, Jean clasped Mei Lin’s free hand in both of hers. “Others’ abuses of you are not your sins, Mei Lin. You have nothing to be ashamed of or sorry for.”

Mei Lin shook her head, incredulous. “Don’t I?” 

Ensuring she caught her friend’s eye, Jean shook her head. “Not one thing.” She paused, encouraged when Mei Lin squeezed her hand. “Sometimes the hardest part of moving on is forgiving yourself.” The gravest sins of her life—giving in to temptation with Christopher, accusing him of avoiding the military to stay on the homestead, ignoring the needs of one son in favor of the other’s—sprung to mind, and she shoved them into the dark corner of her heart where they usually lay dormant. “I’m still trying. Some days, I can be kind to myself, but others…”

With eyes that had long tired of shedding tears, Mei Lin studied Jean. “You wish it had been you instead.”

“So badly,” Jean whispered. “But we’re still here. And after all this time, all the longing, your family is here.”

With an incredulous smile, Mei Lin sighed. “Aren’t we the lucky ones?” Sniffling, she opened her purse, intent on finding a handkerchief. “At this rate, we will be quite a sight by the time we arrive in Shanghai.”

With a watery laugh, Jean swiped at her cheeks.

“Oh,” Mei Lin said, producing a photo instead of a handkerchief. “Here, a more recent photo of Ying Yue.”

The black and white photo depicted a dimpled, lively child with her tiny arms wrapped around the neck of a beloved doll, and after Jean cooed over Ying Yue’s beauty, she was struck by how much of Lucien she saw in his granddaughter’s smile. Shortly after their marriage, Lucien and Jean passed a morning in their bedroom, thumbing through old photographs. Since Lucien teased Jean about her baby pictures, she insisted he retrieve one of his own. Lucien had smiled sadly as he handed Jean the photo of a carefree four-year-old boy that Jean hardly recognized. Apparently, his mother had said something to make him laugh, though he couldn’t remember what.

“What can you tell me about her father?” Jean asked, returning the photo.

Gen Jiang was a mystery to Jean. Lucien had only met him once, and she had been pleasantly surprised to hear that Gen gave Lucien more of a chance than Li could at the time. Based on Lucien’s account of Gen’s experience in the fall of Singapore, he likely saw in Lucien what he himself longed for, a father who would do anything to reconcile with his child. After Lucien’s visit, Gen reached out to him a couple of times, which must have been why Lucien recognized the handwriting. Without much time to consider Gen’s part in her suffering, Jean had not formed an opinion of him. She didn’t want to hate him. He was just a son looking for his father, and after all his searching he had only found a monster. But his deception had ransacked her life, and if she didn’t learn more about him soon, the damning information she had would solidify her opinion of him.

Mei Lin pursed her lips, leaving Jean in no doubt of _her_ opinion. “Despite the damage he’s caused, he is a good man. He is a professor in Shanghai, and he gives Li more freedom than many women in China dream of.” Slipping the photo back into her wallet, she hesitated. “He’s a good father. If only he hadn’t been so naïve.”

“It won’t cost them their marriage, I hope?”

“No, but it will take time for Li to forgive him, and thankfully, he’s willing to give her that. He is staying with his mother and her husband, thought I doubt his step-father will condone that for long.”

While the thought of turning away one of her boys was inconceivable to Jean, she held her tongue. “Does Ying Yue have any idea what’s going on?”

Jostled by the bus’s tread over a bumpy stretch of road, Mei Lin gripped the armrest. “She thinks her papa is staying with his mother so that when Lucien is released, he can stay with them until he’s well again.”

Jean winced. “I hope that things will be resolved before she realizes anything is amiss.” Though with her strange, broken grandfather living in their house, Ying Yue could hardly be ignorant of change. While he loved Amelia fiercely, Lucien had longed to meet his daughter’s baby girl. In all this tragedy, surely he would find solace in seeing Ying Yue’s smile in person. Again, the uncertainty of the state she would find Lucien in twisted like a knife to her gut. She didn’t want to know what Gen’s father had done to Lucien; she only wanted to mend the wounds. But to do that, she had to know it all.

“Do you know—did the doctors say…if there are other, more invisible injuries?”

The pain in Mei Lin’s eyes told Jean more than she wanted to know. “When I last saw him, it was a good day. The certainty of your arrival is doing wonders for him.”

Jean hadn’t realized that she feared Lucien’s reaction to seeing her until hearing Mei Lin’s assurance of his eagerness. “But he wasn’t coping well, was he?”

“Jean—”

“I have to know before I see him. I’m not—strong like you are. I can’t just walk in without knowing who I’ll find.” The words tumbled out of her mouth like a secret long buried, and she hid her watery eyes by reaching under her seat to retrieve her purse, where she dug for a handkerchief.

To her credit, Mei Lin waited until Jean had regained her tenuous hold on control before continuing. “He begged me not to tell you.”

For all their relationship’s speed bumps and sharp curves, Lucien had spent their marriage working harder at not keeping secrets from her. Before their marriage, he wouldn’t have dreamed of admitting that something felt off about his decision to go to Sydney. But he respected her as a partner and valued her input. The fact that he wanted to hide his pain from her, even temporarily, left her wondering what other habits may return.

“I think he is being stupid.” Mei Lin fixed her friend with a knowing look that drew a smile out of Jean.

“Yes, he does that.” Despite her disappointment and anxiety, she couldn’t help but relish in the opportunity to talk about Lucien this way, like he hadn’t left, like everything was as it should be.

_Eventually_ , she hoped, _it will be_.


	11. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Christmas Eve, Jiang and Lucien talk about their children.

December 24, 1963

This time, when he pressed his trembling fingers to a victim’s throat, Lucien was prepared for the unsettling stillness. Unlike the last two, this man knew what Jiang wanted from the start, but Jiang made him suffer for longer than the others. The colonel had the misfortune of being the one ordered to tell Jiang, all those years ago, that his wife and child had perished in the fall of Singapore. Though Jiang never saw him again until this moment, Colonel Song endured pain borne from fresh hatred.

Lucien had come prepared to listen to the extracted information in the hopes of warning the police in the clue he left behind. Apparently, the colonel’s orders to use his family’s deaths to begin molding Jiang into the monster they wanted him to be came from a former senior colonel, now colonel general, Hai Xu.

Naturally, now that he had information that could save one of Jiang’s potential victims, he lacked the means. No stray piece of paper could be found in the dining room in which Jiang eviscerated Song. So instead of a life-saving missive, Lucien slipped a miniature dragonfly figurine, swiped from a table holding a clock and family photos, down the back of Song’s soaked shirt when he checked for a pulse. If Lucien’s friend took the bait cast at the last crime scene, he would connect the animal to the identical name of their last military intelligence assignment together.

How he longed to find comfort instead of dread in hope.

Opening and closing his fists, desperate to quell his temper and slow his pulse, Lucien emerged once again from the bloody mess Jiang made—no, the mess that _they_ made—and into the shadow cast by the foliage in Song’s backyard. They had parked the car about half a mile from the house, and several miles away, Baako, small sailboat and change of clothes in tow, waited for them along the Huangpu riverbank. Baako would take the car and the evidence to undisclosed locations for disposal and safekeeping, while Lucien and Jiang sailed back upriver to the safehouse.

Eerily calm and collected for a man covered in blood, Jiang stayed one step ahead of Lucien, just enough to lead, to keep control of Lucien through peripherals. Through the back gate and the brush beyond, Song’s muffled screams echoed in Lucien’s ears. He hadn’t felt so bloody useless in ages. Even if this flimsy plan worked, even if he eventually escaped, who would he be when he did? The shell of a man who plotted to save his own life while other men died for lies their superiors told? A weak, selfish bastard who put the life of his loved ones above those of three men? How many families were being torn to shreds by this madman whose neck Lucien could snap if he had the guts to take another life? What was a little blood on his hands when his clothes were stained with it?

While he longed to end it all the easy way, by taking Jiang’s life and resurrecting an identity long dead, Lucien forced himself to heed the other voice in his head. _Don’t give up now, not after three men have already lost their lives, and you’ve left a trail_. He could almost feel her hands on his chest, urging him not to do to disappoint her. _Whatever your proximity, you are not a murderer. Don’t become one now._

Unable to deny Jean anything, when he slid into the passenger seat of Jiang’s sedan, he clasped his hands in his lap and kept his eyes forward. What was Jean doing right now? According to the clock in Song’s dining room, midnight had passed long ago, so Christmas morning had already dawned in Ballarat. He thanked his wife’s God for the small mercy of company at the house on Christmas morning. Though he had been toying with the idea of buying his own house before Lucien left for Sydney, Matthew wouldn’t dream of leaving Jean in that empty house. Thinking of Matthew’s threat, delivered just before the wedding, Lucien almost smiled. Sure, Mathew owed Lucien an ass-kicking, but in the meantime, he would look after Jean.

Could she be happy right now? As long as she had loved ones to soldier on for, she would put on a cheery face, host Christmas luncheon, pass out presents, perhaps sing a carol or two. But Lucien wanted more than anything for her to be happy, not just for an ephemeral moment or hour, but _permanently_ healed and whole. No matter what delusions he harbored about his role in these deaths, he refused to hide from the fact that he broke the heart he had vowed to cherish. If he made it home to Jean, how would they heal? Could they heal, or would he lose yet another life, another family, to demons?

 _No, darling_. Her voice visited him again, and Lucien realized for the first time how long it had been since he’d eaten. _This time, neither of us will have to heal alone_.

In the driver’s seat, Jiang slipped his bloody gloves into a plastic wrap and handed them to Lucien, who stored them in the glove compartment. While Lucien had never known Jiang to be anything other than a beast, he wondered again how Jiang got to this, the point of no return. For as long as Lucien had known him, this operative had been irreparably damaged, as Lucien so easily could have been. After the war, with no family, few friends to trust, and countless crushed dreams, Lucien and Jiang both embraced the darkness. Their paths diverged only when Thomas Blake wrote Lucien in a nearly illegible script, begging his son to come home.

Huan Jiang had no one to call him home, no voice of his beloved to heed and regard with hope. While Jiang’s misfortune did not excuse the havoc he wrecked, Lucien knew the inexplicable, uncontrollable rage triggered by such a loss. Lucien survived it; Jiang did not. 

“Tell me about your son.”

As the car sped past them, streetlamps briefly shed light on Jiang’s whitening knuckles around the steering wheel. “Why?”

“Because I just helped you kill another human being, and talking about our children helps me remember why I help you.”

Jiang’s grip relaxed only slightly. “You’ve seen him more recently than I, so you know more than I do.”

Lucien scratched an itch beneath his unruly beard. “I only met Gen briefly, and at the time, I was more concerned with getting reacquainted with my own child.” To humor Gen’s father, however, Lucien added, “He is a fine chap, a good husband. Smart too—he’s a professor.”

Before Lucien could identify the emotion flickering in Jiang’s black eyes, it disappeared.

Lucien broke the ensuing silence with an olive branch. “When Li was four, her favorite food was mandarin oranges. Well, on second thought, perhaps it was a tie between mandarin oranges and maple syrup, which she wanted to put on everything. Mei Lin was much better about telling her no than I was, but fathers are made to spoil their little girls, don’t you think?”

For two or three miles, the rhetorical question hung between them, but Lucien waited patiently, even going so far as to lean his head back on the headrest and close his eyes.

Perhaps it was Lucien’s serenity that broke Jiang.

“My son never liked sports. He preferred books, no matter how I discouraged his reading.” While Jiang’s voice was stiff and unfeeling as ever, his avoidance of Gen’s name betrayed his pain. Lucien had done the same many times, preferring to say _my baby daughter_ than to utter her name. “I suppose I wanted him to be more like me than like his mother, but none of that mattered when I lost him.”

For Jiang to take responsibility for any of his misdeeds seemed impossible—simply because he justified his crimes in a misguided pursuit of justice—but he bore the blame of his family’s suffering, over which he had no control, like a cross.

“No matter what happened, you made the best choice possible with the information you had,” Lucien said. “So many thought they knew best before the fall of Singapore. Commanding officers saying whatever they were ordered to say, spies whispering the truth to all the wrong people, locals acting on false intelligence—it was such a chaotic time.”

“Is that what you tell yourself?”

“No, I tell myself I failed them by not sending them home to my father, but that doesn’t make it true.” When Jiang lapsed back into stony silence, Lucien pressed on. “Gen is alive. Just because you missed watching him grow up doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a life. He and his mother were reunited, Jiang. Most children were divided from their parents forever.”

“Do not patronize me,” Jiang snapped. “You, who left China as soon as you could, while the rest of us picked up the pieces. You only came back to spy on my countrymen and cause more death.”

A vein in Lucien’s neck throbbed. “ _You’re_ lecturing _me_ about bloodshed?”

“You are willing to do whatever is necessary to save your family. So am I.”

Lucien forced himself to remember that violence had permanently poisoned Jiang’s mind, that he had long since rejected morality and humanity to live with himself and his choices. “But they _are_ safe,” he said. “Just because you haven’t been a part of their lives doesn’t mean that they aren’t safe. It’s—it’s hard to let go.” Li’s face, shocked and pained and confused, would haunt him forever. After seventeen years of thinking her father dead or simply gone, here stood this man who swore on his life that he spent all that time looking for her. “It’s hard to accept that even though they’ve been in our thoughts every moment, we have not been in theirs. They grew up without us, they made friends and mistakes and choices without us, but we’re so lucky that our children got to live.”

Having said all he knew to say, Lucien fixed his eyes on the road ahead, and he forced himself not to turn his head when Jiang finally spoke again.

“You say that my son is a good man. I knew he would be. I harbor no delusions that he will understand the choices I’ve made.” For the first time since he kidnapped Lucien, Jiang’s voice lacked the sharp timbre of calculation. Resignation had taken its place. “He will see me as the world sees me, a mercenary, a menace, perhaps a monster. But I hope he will see a father who did not abandon his son.”

Lucien shook his head, remembering the story Gen had been so brave to tell a stranger. “He saw you coming to save him, before your comrades dragged you away,” he said. “Gen clung to that image his whole life, which is why he asked me to find you.”

Jiang’s next inhale caught in his throat, shocking him. The peculiar gleam in his eyes returned, just as briefly, between breaths.

 _Pride_ , Lucien realized. _He’s proud of his son_. “Despite everything he suspects about you, he knows there is good in you.”

True to form, Lucien had said the wrong thing. Shoulders square, jaw set, and thumbs drumming on the steering wheel, Jiang narrowed his eyes. “All this talk about family reminds me that I owe you an updated proof of life. Open your mouth again, and I will ask my friends to start sending appendages.”

Lucien resigned himself to silence, suspecting that Jiang would never again allow himself a moment of vulnerability. Even after the depravity Lucien witnessed Jiang revel in, Lucien had hoped he could use Jiang’s love for his son to bring him out of the abyss.

But Jiang was just another man Lucien couldn’t save.


	12. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jiang interrogates his final victim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I made you wait longer for chapter 10, I thought I'd post chapter 11 a few days earlier than I planned. This chapter has a TW for violence (nothing too graphic). 
> 
> Thanks again to escapewithstories, who's studying her ass off right now and is going to crush her exams later!

January–March 25, 1964

Two weeks after Song’s murder, Baako reported that the police had nearly made a connection between the murders and that someone at the British consulate was making enquiries about Jiang. Apparently, British intelligence operatives had been investigating Mrs. Ruan’s family for their communist influence, so while they had eyes on his wife, Major Ruan had been murdered in his own home. While the Chinese military apparently had no interest in handing Jiang over to the authorities, especially in light of Special Branch’s embarrassing mishandling of the Ruan matter, this news still unsettled Jiang. For Lucien, however, Baako’s report brought more joy than he’d felt in nine months. For weeks, Lucien woke every morning with Jean’s voice in his head. _Today could be the day you come home_.

Jiang’s frustration, not only with the authorities but also with Baako, did not escape Lucien’s notice. Baako’s infrequent visits often ended in what most would consider a one-sided dispute, but Lucien knew better than to mistake Jiang’s hushed responses for placidity. Reluctantly, Jiang agreed that the hit, originally planned for February, should be postponed until the end of March. Because of the colonel general’s recent narrow escape from an assassination attempt, Hai Xu was protected by at least two men in eight-hour rotations. Jiang could not strike prematurely and succeed, so he opted for a risky delay instead.

The most notable change in Lucien’s circumstances was that instead of coming to Lucien’s room, Jiang invited him to the dining room to strategize. Huan Jiang was incapable of trust, but his confidence in Lucien’s willingness to obey for the sake of his family allowed Jiang to bend the rules of traditional captivity. Instead of eating alone in separate rooms, Jiang and Lucien shared the occasional meal together over dossiers and floor plans. Each time Lucien tried to steer the conversation from the hit, Jiang reverted to silence, choosing to use his own expertise rather than risk giving Lucien an excuse to open his mouth.

Based on his surveillance of the property, Jiang proposed that they attack the two guards just after the shift change at 10:00 p.m. When Lucien suggested merely incapacitating them instead of killing them, Jiang responded with a wave of his hand. “As long as I get what I need from Xu, I care not for consequences.”

Lucien rubbed his hands over his face, eventually pressing his palms against his closed eyes. “Plan on pinning everything on me, do you?”

“I plan to escape undetected, which is why this extra time to plan is so vital to this operation.”

Exhausted from the frequency of the same argument, Lucien refused to ask Jiang why, when the authorities were dangerously close to catching them, he insisted on such bravado. Logic no longer appealed to Jiang, but Lucien refused to quit searching for a way to get through to him. If a man was willing to go to these lengths, however depraved, to avenge a lie about his family, surely a glimmer of light remained in his ravaged soul. 

“That’s a bold assumption,” Lucien said. “After all you’ve done for him, could you really accept dying without seeing your son again?”

The scratch of lead against paper ceased momentarily. “It will not come to that.”

Leaning forward with his elbows on the table, Lucien cocked his head. “For a man who plans for every contingency, that’s an obstinate stance.”

“It is because I have planned for every contingency that I will not fail.”

 _You don’t know everything_ , he would have said, if it wouldn’t have thrown away his only chance at fulfilling his vow to Jean. “Have you thought about what Gen wants?” When Jiang thumbed through another file without responding, Lucien said, “He’s a grown man now, and you cannot disregard his feelings just because you think you know what’s best for him.”

Jiang’s head snapped up, eyes faintly glimmering as if light was trapped at the bottom of two bottomless pools. “I have _always_ done what is best for my son.”

With a sad smile, Lucien shook his head. “Fathers think that, don’t we? Because we were brought up to believe that the patriarch of a family should have all the answers, that we’re weak if we admit that we don’t know what to do.” Bracing himself for a violent reaction, he tried meeting Jiang’s elusive gaze. “I didn’t know if I was making the right choice when I put my family on that boat. For a long time, I told myself that it was my father’s fault, and after the delusion failed, I blamed my pride. Those were contributing factors, but in the end, I simply had no idea what to do and no one to turn to. There was…nothing anyone could do, for either Li and Mei Lin or Gen and Jinjing.”

When Jiang did meet Lucien’s eyes, the animosity within them made Lucien worry the man would snap his neck. “When you see the world as I do, there is always something to be done, even if revenge is the only option.”

~

Late-March humidity thickened both the air and the billowy fog, which disguised the men in black as mere blurry shadows. A thunderstorm nearly ruined Jiang’s carefully laid plans, but in the end, not even the weather defied Huan Jiang. To Lucien, nature’s cooperation only added to his dismal outlook on the situation.

He had run out of time, to save Jiang or himself. 

Baako’s last visit, only two weeks ago, convinced Jiang that the British had given up on pursuing him. The British military’s embarrassment over Major Ruan’s murder and the Chinese government’s staunch denial of any knowledge regarding Huan Jiang had shattered all of Lucien’s hopes of rescue. The probability of a fourth murder mocked Lucien, who had tried to outsmart a lost, calculating man, with nothing more than household items and chance.

Every time he failed, another man and his family paid for it. Not again. Tonight, Lucien would take the last in his long line of chances to save Colonel General Xu and to get home alive. He could not fail either task. If he escaped after Jiang had murdered Xu, Lucien could be blamed for all four murders. But if he died saving Xu’s life, Jiang would lay waste to Lucien’s family. Lucien tried not to think of Jean, sweet Jean, who, if he failed again, would be killed, or worse, before finding the closure she deserved. He couldn’t even give her that. And Li—God, what hell would Jiang unleash on her life by reappearing in his son’s? If Jiang was willing to use her to control Lucien, he would have no qualms with hurting her to control his son.

As the time for the last kill drew near, Jiang had displayed nervous ticks that Lucien remembered well from their shared history. Clenching and unclenching fists, unpredictable bouts of fury, and incessant pacing often preceded an assignment on which everything relied. However, those habits didn’t alarm Lucien nearly enough as Jiang’s muttering did. Jiang, a man of few words, had begun talking to himself in the middle of the night. At first, he thought the voice he heard originated in his own mind, for Jiang had taken to drugging Lucien on nights that Jiang left the house. As his head cleared, however, Lucien recognized the refrain _He has to understand, this is all for him_ , and his heart broke once again for this unreachable man.

But now, protected by the darkness, the nefarious task at hand, Jiang had reclaimed the unsettling peace that came with being in his element. Though bloodshot, his eyes were sharp and his hands, though bruised from a round with a kitchen wall, steady. Pressing their backs against the house’s far western wall, they waited until the two weary soldiers drove away in a military vehicle, leaving two unsuspecting comrades to be ambushed. At Jiang’s curt nod, they attacked. The crunch of breaking bones made Lucien nauseous, even as he wrapped his arm around the other soldier’s neck and squeezed. Dragging him behind the west wall, Lucien waited until the boy’s breath slowed before lowering him to the grass. He would have to give the boy’s weapon to Jiang, but at least if the boy woke up before they left, he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone. Going for help would be his best option. 

Using the key ring from the dead soldier’s belt, Jiang opened the front door. At such a late hour, the lavish home was still, and the ticking grandfather clock and the wind-blown branches against the windows provided the only sounds.

Until the pad of tiny, carefree feet rose above the unremarkable sounds.

According to the general’s dossier, he had one grandson, but since he lived across town, they hadn’t considered his presence here tonight. No older than four, the child held a handful of biscuits in one hand and a silky, blue blanket in the other. At first, he blinked slowly, as if he thought he was dreaming, but since the staircase next to him provided the only way to the master bedroom, Jiang quickly disabused him of that notion. Lucien and Jiang both darted for the boy, but Jiang reached him first, wrapping him in a choke hold and gagging him with his blanket before he could scream.

“No!” Lucien hissed, an arm outstretched toward the struggling little boy. If he took another step, he knew that Jiang would snap that tiny neck just as easily as he had the soldier’s, but the boy’s face was already too red to waste time. “No, please. He’s barely more than a baby—too young to be a witness.” When Jiang’s hold only tightened, Lucien switched tactics. “Gen was six when he thought he saw you coming to save him from a burning building, and no one believed him.”

At the sound of his son’s name, Jiang’s right eye twitched, and he loosened his grip just enough to allow the child to breathe. “He is your responsibility,” he said, his voice steady despite the stress of the additional factor. “If he tries to escape, you both die. If he cries for help, you both die. If he interrupts my work, you both die.”

“You don’t mean to keep him _in the room_ with us?” Lucien gasped. “For God’s sake, Jiang, he doesn’t need to see his grandfather tortured to death.”

“Many boys have seen worse.”

After decades without it, connection, the bearer of unexplainable, unpredictable feelings, made Jiang uncomfortable, and Lucien intended to exploit that weakness. “Just because violence ruined your life doesn’t mean it has to ruin his. Just hand him over to me, and we can minimize the damage done to this boy by keeping him in another room. Like you said, he will be my responsibility. Same rules apply. In fact, he’s hardly seen your face, so when interrogated by the authorities, he will more easily identify me if I keep him close.” At the sound of the boy’s whimpering, Lucien locked eyes with him and prayed he could see the kindness and sincerity in his gaze, but the boy squeezed his eyes shut. “I just want to keep him safe, and if you truly thought he needed to die, you’d have killed him instantly.”

After the longest five seconds Lucien had ever known, Jiang nodded at down at the child, whose tears would have wet Jiang’s hand if not for the gloves. “Take him and follow my lead.” 

Lucien reached Jiang in two strides and plucked the boy from Jiang’s clutches. Unfortunately, with his gag loosened, the child opened his mouth to cry for help, so Lucien brought a hand to the boy’s mouth. “I know you don’t trust me, and this is all very scary, but I need you to stay quiet,” he whispered in Mandarin, hoping Jiang, nearly six paces ahead, couldn’t hear. “I want to keep you safe, and I want to help your grandfather if I can.” He reached for the boy’s blanket, which had fallen between them when the boy had opened his mouth. Brushing the silky cloth against the child’s cheek, Lucien whispered, “Hold tight to this, cover your ears, and close your eyes.”

The poor little chap seemed relieved at the command to shut his watery eyes.

Jiang did not pause at the top to the stairs to listen, for if their unexpected encounter had woken Xu, Jiang did not want to give him more time to prepare a defense. Jiang, pressed against the wall next to the third door on the right, nodded to the open door across the hall from him before soundlessly turning the doorknob and slipping inside Xu’s room. Lucien, without even the beginnings of a plan, decided to take the boy into the room Jiang indicated for the time being.

When his eyes adjusted to the darkness in the small room, he noted the small size of the unmade bed with stuffed animals strewn about. Without a word, Lucien knelt and set the boy on his feet. Surprised, but apparently not stupid, the child scurried away from Lucien, stumbling every few feet through the obstacle course of toys between the door and the bed. Lucien let him go, for the only way out of the room was the door behind him.

Lucien knew he should probably spend some time encouraging the boy to trust him, but the pressure of formulating a plan with a child’s life on the line made that step seem frivolous. It wouldn’t matter if they trusted each other if Jiang caught them before they escaped. In three strides, he’d crossed the room to the window, which faced the front lawn. The house was protected from the local population by a foreboding gate, about half a mile from the house. Hoisting the child over would be next to impossible—

Screams from across the hall set the child wailing.

Lucien was at the child’s bedside in a moment, cursing himself for not working on getting the boy to trust him. Instead of covering the boy’s mouth, he cupped his hands over his ears. An expert in Jiang’s tactics by now, Lucien knew that he wouldn’t hurt Xu too much for too long in the beginning. He waited for the cries to subside before removing his hands and holding them up for the boy to see. “Okay, that’s over for now,” he said. “Next time you hear anything like that, cover your ears, alright?”

With a pitiful whimper, the boy nodded.

“Right. My name is Lucien. Can you tell me your name?”

The child burrowed under the covers.

“Fair enough. I know this is hard to believe, but I want to help you. The man across the hall is not my friend. I’m going to try and find a way out of here.” He paused, studying the tiny lump in the covers. “Do you want to help me find a way?”

“No.” The conviction in such a tiny voice would have made Lucien laugh under less dire circumstances.

“That’s fine,” Lucien said. “I’d be scared of me too.”

A tuft of black hair poked out from under the blanket, followed by a pair of wide, brown eyes. “Nuh-uh.”

“I promise. Want to know a secret?” Lucien asked. When the boy nodded, he leaned close to whisper, “I’m scared to death right now.”

Before the little one could respond, more terrible sounds rang out, and the boy scrambled into Lucien’s lap. Covering the boys dimpled hands with his own scarred ones, Lucien ground his teeth and counted the seconds until the sounds waned.

“My name is Ming, and I’ll help you if you make him stop,” the child sobbed.

Holding tight to Ming, Lucien rose from the bed. “We need to get you to safety, Ming, and then I promise I’ll make him stop.” Moving back to the window, he peered down, gauging the possibility of climbing down with Ming. A fall from this height would likely kill them both, and with the recent rain soaking the roof, Lucien didn’t want to risk a fall.

For a split second, Lucien swore he saw the golden glow of a torch flicker in the bushes lining the drive. On instinct, he ducked beside the windowsill, keeping Ming out of sight. Did the unconscious guard have a flashlight? If so, why would he be hiding? Then the light flashed again and again and again, and Lucien nearly laughed when he realized that someone was spelling “dragonfly” in morse code.

“Okay, Ming, listen carefully.” He found himself whispering, hypersensitive to every potential way these haphazard scraps of a plan could go wrong. Jiang would be preoccupied, but at any moment, he could burst in, wanting proof that Lucien and Ming were right where he left them. “I have a friend out there, and he brought some men who can help us.”

Before Lucien could say anything else, he heard a crash downstairs, and there was no more time. Jiang would make one of two assumptions, that Lucien had made the noise in a botched escape attempt or that someone else was intervening. Either way, he wouldn’t be stupid enough not to check Ming’s bedroom first.

“Are those—”

Lucien shushed Ming, sat on the floor, and held the child tighter so that they would look just as shocked as Jiang would undoubtedly be. When Jiang burst in, eyes wild with fury, Lucien knew he had the upper hand. Anger had always made Jiang sloppy; he’d been angry when Lucien put a bullet in his shoulder.

 _Steady on, Blake. Don’t get cocky_.

“Follow me,” Jiang hissed.

At the sight of his grandfather’s blood on Jiang’s face, Ming began to cry again, so Lucien patted his back ineffectually as he followed one of the last orders Jiang would ever give him. Whoever broke in meant to be heard, but Lucien wondered if the men had infiltrated the house. If so, he could hand the boy off and ensure his safety. From the top of the staircase at the end of the hall, Lucien saw moonlight flooding through the front windows into the foyer, where a rock lay in a pile of shattered glass.

Lucien scrutinized every shadow on their descent—behind the grandfather clock, in the alcove, between the fluttering curtains. But neither Lucien nor Jiang could look under the staircase until it was too late. A blur tackled Jiang, and as they struggled, Lucien sprang for the door. One of Fitz’s men tried to drag him outside, but Lucien thrust Ming into his arms.

“Take the boy,” Lucien demanded. As soon as he saw Ming over the threshold, he headed straight for the fight. Jiang had escaped his attacker’s hold and was brandishing his knife in one hand and gun in the other. His attacker, a little worse for wear with a slash across his cheek, held his much larger gun steady, aimed right at Jiang’s head.

Taking a tentative step forward with an outstretched arm as his only defense, Lucien said, “Okay, how about we all calm down?”

“I think we might be a bit past that, Blake.”

Lucien had never been so glad to hear Charles Fitzwilliam’s voice, but it was not the one Jiang needed to hear.

“Huan, don’t listen to him. Listen to me,” Lucien said. “Think of Gen. This isn’t going as you planned, but there’s still a chance you can see him again if you just put the gun down and come quietly.”

Swinging his arm around, Jiang shook his gun in Lucien’s direction. “ _Come quietly_?” The volatility in his voice matched his shaking hands. “No one comes quietly in our business, Blake.”

Lucien shook his head and mustered a tentative smile. “You’re not in the business anymore, Jiang. Whatever you may think, whatever you’ve done, you don’t have a higher up telling you what to do. You can make your own choice, just as you have this last year in taking what’s owed you.”

Jiang sneered. “You think once they hand me over to the Chinese government, I will live another day?”

“You and I both know that you know too much to be handled in the usual way,” Lucien countered, taking a step closer inside their imperfect circle. “In any case, they’ll want to debrief you. But don’t think about them right now. You didn’t do this for them. You did it for Gen, and he deserves to hear that from his father’s lips.”

When Jiang hesitated, Lucien knew he had him.

The armed officer behind Jiang didn’t feel the same way.

“Sanders, don’t!”

Fitz’s command came too late. Before anyone could get close enough to stop him, Jiang had stabbed Sanders in the gut and aimed his gun at Fitz.

Time had only stood still for Lucien once before—on day 30 of the battle of Singapore, when their stims had run out, and grown men were slumped, half asleep against their rifles, only to be roused by the next firefight or explosive. What remained of his company was about to be overtaken, and oddly, Lucien almost felt relief that at least for a few minutes, as long as it took the enemy soldiers to round them up, no more of his friends would have to die.

Now, on day 363 of this monstrous campaign for revenge, Lucien knew he would do whatever it took to prevent the loss of another man’s life.

 _I’m sorry, Jean,_ he thought as the first bullet hit. _I’m so sorry._


	13. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucien wakes up in the hospital and receives three very special visitors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this chapter will soften the blow of the cliffhanger. It's one of my favorites, and I hope you enjoy. We're almost there :)

March 26, 1964

As a man who had stopped believing in God years ago, Lucien did not find the abyss in which he floated surprising. He’d certainly expected nothing more of the afterlife, if this existence could be categorized as such. Quite honestly, he’d expected much worse. But Jean expected so much more—eternity not only with her God but with her parents, with the baby daughter God took from her, with Christopher. 

_I’m sorry, my darling…_

Always sorry, never changing, not enough. Mere feet from freedom, he spent his last chance, and now Jean would be alone, not only in life but apparently in death as well.

Gradually, inexplicable sounds—footsteps, coughs, distant shouting—breached the bleak barrier. He recognized those sounds not just as those belonging in the land of the living, but also of the sick and dying.

_No, surely not_.

Despite the paralyzing darkness, he inclined his head toward the sounds, toward hope. Movement, however, only earned him stabbing chest pain, which sent him gasping for breath that seemed too difficult to acquire for a dead man. If he could spare the oxygen for laughter, it would bubble out of him. He welcomed pain like an old friend, knowing that its presence meant another chance.

A man’s sharp Mandarin rose above the din. “Sir, try not to struggle.”

The only struggle Lucien felt was the one to open his eyes, the lids suddenly heavy as lead. When he tried to speak, only a rattling rasp came out. _Where am I?_ he wanted to shout. A firm grip trapped his flailing arms. _Don’t touch me!_

“Blake? Blake, it’s Fitz. You’re safe—oi, let go of him. Blake? You’re in hospital. Can you hear me?” A heavy hand landed on Lucien’s shoulder but without the usually bracing squeeze he associated with the voice. “Easy, now. Take a few breaths. You’re coming out of a bugger of an anesthetic.”

Lucien struggled to process the words, for the firmer his grip on consciousness, the more potent the effects of the anesthetic. Slowly, he strung the words together into a coherent thought. A doctor. _Fitz_. Hospital. Safe.

_It’s over_. _It’s finally over_. No more plotting, no more sneaking, no more violence, no more locks, no more loneliness. Soon he could have Jean, who just moments ago he thought divided from him forever. For all his broken promises, Jean could rest assured that his promise to never leave home without her again would be kept. After twelve months of torture and unspeakable pain, Lucien doubted he possessed the strength to go anywhere alone.

Lucien forced his foggy brain obey the demands of his body. With great effort, his eyelids fluttered, and the darkness disappeared, replaced by fluorescent light and blurry faces.

“There he is,” Fitz said, his hand still on Lucien’s shoulder.

As the grainy vision gave way to clarity, Lucien beheld Charles Fitzwilliam, a man with a massive frame and a lopsided mouth into a forced half grin, stooping down to Lucien’s eye level. His gray eyes, though bloodshot, were sharp, but his mildly unnerving gaze left Lucien wondering if this nightmare he thought he’d woken from had more in store for him.

A nurse brought a cup of water to his lips, and Lucien would have guzzled it if the nurse hadn’t maintained her grip on the cup. His subsequent coughing fit nearly knocked him out, but he recovered quickly enough to rasp, “Jiang?”

Fitz didn’t have a chance to respond before the doctor demanded that he either give him room to work or leave the room. 

As the doctor and nurse asked him banal questions, poked and prodded, and scribbled on charts, Lucien descended into panic. While his immediate worries were for naught, more piled on with every passing second. Did Fitz and his men apprehend Jiang? If they didn’t, do they know where he is? Are Li and Ying Yue under the consulate’s protection? And Jean—who was protecting Jean? Would he be imprisoned for crimes that Jiang refused to answer for?

“Mr. Blake, you’re hyperventilating,” the nurse said, her voice clipped and decidedly not comforting.

“I think you’ll find,” Fitz said, switching to Mandarin, “that if you’ll let me talk with him, his vital signs will improve.”

When the nurse ignored him and reached for the IV, the doctor held up a hand. “Five minutes,” he snapped at Fitz. He gave the nurse a pointed look, and she dropped the IV with a huff.

As soon as the door closed behind the medical team, Fitz held up a hand. “I know you have questions—just let me talk. It’ll be faster.” He pulled a chair close to Lucien’s bed and collapsed into it. For the first time, Lucien noticed the blood—his blood, no doubt—staining the front of Fitz’s shirt.

“All that brass, and they still won’t bring you a change of clothes?” Lucien teased.

Fitz cocked a bushy eyebrow. “After all my investigative work, you decided to jump in front of a madman with a gun?”

Lucien supposed he deserved the pain that accompanied his chuckle, but he quickly sobered. “Is he dead?”

“Fortunately for you, no, but he’s injured and being held for questioning related to the savage murder of four men.” Fitz leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and folding his hands. “You are technically being held for questioning as well, but I convinced the local authorities not to cuff you since you’re…incapacitated.”

“Just how badly am I banged up?”

“From the bullets? Your lung collapsed—not for the first time, I hear—but the bullet in your thigh went clean through. You’ll walk with a cane for a few weeks, but you’ll live.” He paused. “The rest—”

“Doesn’t matter right now.” With so little of this situation resolved, he had no desire to confront his trauma.

For a moment, Fitz’s pursed lips and searching look made Lucien think he would press on anyway, but in the end he nodded briskly and moved on. “Jiang is conscious and quiet at the moment, but we’ll get him to talk. You’re not going down for this. Nevertheless, I will need you to give a statement to a colleague of mine, who is standing by. The sooner we have your statement, the easier it will be to crack Jiang.”

Having expected as much, Lucien moved on quickly. “Jean? My daughter and her family? Mei Lin?”

“Safe. My men have been watching them for weeks now.” The following pause unsettled Lucien more than the last.

“Tell me you didn’t.”

Fitz laced both hands behind his head in an effort to release the tension in his shoulders. “Who else could I have called, Blake? Would you rather I called your estranged daughter? I’m sure she’d love to hear that her husband is the reason you’ve been missing.”

Frowning, Lucien nodded. “I suppose you’re right. I just don’t want to involve Mei Lin in this—I’m not her responsibility anymore.”

“Well, your wife is on the other side of the world—though protected—and she can’t get here soon enough to be of any help to you.”

Lucien paled. “Does she know?”

“No. I thought I would leave that decision up to you. It’s a lot to lay on someone over the phone.”

“It’s equally shocking when someone you thought long dead shows up on your doorstep,” Lucien muttered.

“Which is why I thought that between you, Mei Lin, and I, we could make a plan.” Rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, his jaw strained to suppress a yawn. Though the night before had been exhausting, Lucien doubted that the last twelve months had been much easier on Fitz.

“Thank you, Fitz.” When his friend tried to wave it off, he persisted. “Don’t do that. You saved my life and the lives of my family.”

“Jiang should never have been able to find them in the first place. That was our deal,” Fitz admitted. “By the time I got your letter, Jiang had already alerted his associates in Australia and Shanghai.”

“You couldn’t have controlled that,” Lucien said. “You came through in the end, and I’m eternally indebted to you.”

Fitz snickered. “Bullocks. You just have to keep out of scrapes so I don’t have to save your ass again.” When Lucien chuckled, Fitz smiled. “Though honestly, the hardest part was convincing my superiors to support my endeavors. Until three months ago, I was working on my own. Even with their help, if Jiang’s accomplice hadn’t come forward—”

Lucien’s eyes widened. “Baako?”

“Yeah. Guilty conscience, I expect. He came to the consulate on the night of the hit, spilled his guts. In any case, he’s off the grid, so his conscience can’t have overtaken his good sense.”

Gaping, Lucien shook his head. “They’d begun arguing, toward the end. Jiang basically cut him off—how did he know where to be?”

“He’s a spy,” Fitz said with a shrug. “And he learned all his tricks from Jiang. Baako is probably the only person who can get inside that bastard’s head.”

Eyes fixed, unseeing, on his lap, Lucien shook his head. “They fought those last few weeks, but I never questioned his loyalty to Jiang. Believe me, I tried to change his mind.”

“He seemed to me like a man who had run out of time,” Fitz said with a sigh. “My guess is he’d been conflicted for months, but he knew Jiang would go underground after this hit.”

At the sound of harsh muffled voices on the other side of the door, Fitz sprang to his feet, one hand on his sidearm. Lucien had only just begun to panic—surely Jiang hadn’t escaped—when he heard a familiar voice rising above the din. “Fitz, that’s Mei Lin.”

In two bounds, Fitz reached the door and yanked it open. “As you were,” he snapped.

Before he even finished speaking, Mei Lin, clad in a hastily buttoned pink blouse and floor-length skirt, pushed past Fitz into the room. She froze after only two steps, soundlessly covering her mouth with both hands.

Lucien supposed he would have to get used to that expression, a mix of pain and fright and relief, but it didn’t make it easier to see. When her hands returned to her sides and she took a tentative step forward, Lucien said, “I’m sorry, Mei Lin. I didn’t ask Fitz to call you.”

“I am glad he did,” Mei Lin insisted, casting a grateful smile over her shoulder to Fitz. Easing into the chair Fitz had vacated to answer the door, Mei Lin covered one of Lucien’s startlingly bony hands with both of hers. “I can’t believe you are here.”

With a wry smile, Lucien said, “Neither can I, to be honest.” When Mei Lin’s expression showed no signs of lightening, he tried again. “Really, Mei Lin, I’m fine.”

Raising her eyebrows, Mei Lin turned to Fitz. “What did you tell me? Two bullet wounds? Three surgeries?” When Fitz nodded sheepishly under Lucien’s scowl, Mei Lin squeezed Lucien’s hand. “Not to mention a year in captivity. Let me guess—inconsistent meals, confined space, beatings?”

More than anything Mei Lin had said so far, Lucien hated the familiarity with which she spoke of his horrors. He had once vowed to love and to cherish this woman, who had suffered abominably and silently. Instead of answering, he stared unseeing at his hospital bracelet during the strained silence that followed.

Finally, Mei Lin drew a deep breath. “Fitz, would you excuse us, please?”

Before Lucien could object to her unnecessary request, Fitz assented, almost too quickly, and left the estranged couple to speak for longer than they had in over three years.

“You know you can trust Fitz, don’t you?” Lucien said as soon as they were alone.

Mei Lin scoffed. “You expect me to trust one of our oldest friends, who still serves the military? I think not.”

Having been conscious for mere minutes, Lucien Blake had already lodged his foot in his mouth. “Forgive me.”

Mei Lin’s milky brown eyes fixated on his face, as if she could stare long enough to read his thoughts. “Tell me. From the beginning.”

The beginning was easy. In the beginning, he had been sitting at his desk, secure in his safety and his happiness. But after that—the icy bite of the river, the cinderblock basement, the savage beating and constant terror—

“Easy now.” The sound of Mei Lin’s voice brought him to the present, to the room, to the vice grip he trapped Mei Lin’s hand in. When he started to apologize, Mei Lin shook her head. “It’s alright. Just start at the beginning, and we will figure out the rest.”

The facts burst forth in clusters, between the more traumatic details that he only occasionally shared. Mei Lin waited patiently during each break, each seemingly endless series of deep, shuddering breaths. While Mei Lin could truly understand the horrors he experienced, Lucien found himself wishing for Jean’s hand in his instead. Jean, who could crawl into bed with him, hold him while he spoke, run her fingers through his hair when he faltered. Jean, whose mere presence was a balm, whose phantom voice saved him countless times from surrendering. _Jean…_

Without recalling falling asleep, Lucien woke, the warm morning light having given way to the smoldering embers of evening. Directly across from Lucien’s bed, Fitz, freshly clothed in casual attire, slept in two chairs placed side by side. On a cot to Fitz’s left lay Mei Lin, with Fitz’s massive jacket pulled over her shoulders. Between the pain killers in his bloodstream and the tranquil mood of the room, Lucien could have slipped back into slumber, but the voice at his bedside banished all drowsiness.

“Hello, Lucien.”

The last time he heard his daughter’s voice, she had shattered all his hopes, so naturally, hearing it now resurrected all former dreams and gave life to new ones. But _seeing_ her, grown and safe and whole, brought tears to his eyes. Once again, he had appeared in her life only to wreak havoc on it. Did she know the extent of her husband’s involvement in his capture? Would he have to tell her and break her heart yet again?

“Li,” he whispered, not trusting himself to speak more.

A strand of dark hair by Li’s ear had escaped her hastily tied bun, and he longed to brush it back, to fix her hair even though he hadn’t the foggiest idea how. One morning, he had tried, only to butcher a basic braid, but the next morning, Li asked him to fix her hair again. _Practice makes perfect, Papa_.

“Do you need the doctor?”

_No, please don’t leave._ “No, thank you. I—” His voice broke, and he willed his addled brain to find his words in Mandarin. “I’m so glad to see you. You didn’t have to come.”

Li’s eyes darted to her lap, where the knuckles of her tightly clasped hands whitened. “I think I did.”

Ducking his head to catch Li’s elusive gaze, Lucien asked, “What have they told you?”

When Li lifted her head, her eyes, in which Lucien desired only felicity to reside, brimmed with ire and despondence. “That my husband is responsible for your captivity.”

“That’s not true.”

“No?” she scoffed, swiping at her tears. “He did not write to you under a false name? He did not commission you to locate his father, a vile, murderous man who would have killed both me and my child without hesitation?”

Despite Lucien’s firm belief that Gen had no knowledge of his father’s crimes, he could not defend the boy. He bore no ill will to Gen for his father’s actions, but witnessing the effects of Gen’s betrayal on his baby daughter enraged Lucien.

She shook her head and set her jaw, irritated by her emotional outburst. Lucien wished he could assure her that crying didn’t make her weak, but he knew she would not believe him. His little girl had grown up in post-war China, where one had to grow thick skin to survive.

Drawing her back straight and her shoulders back, Li continued. “Gen promised that he was completely ignorant of his father’s actions after the war, and in time, perhaps I will forgive him. But now…” Her eyes lingered on Lucien’s battered, drawn face, and he fought the urge to reach for her hand. If he had learned anything from his first visit and their subsequent correspondence, it was that Li must be allowed make the first move. “Our reconciliation has not progressed as quickly as you hoped, and while I do care for you, I was unprepared for the effect your disappearance had on me.”

For nearly a decade, one of Lucien’s recurring nightmares depicted the day he sent his girls away. Li’s pleading— _Come with us, Papa. Don’t make us go without you_ —as Lucien kissed her and her mother goodbye, her wails for him as the military vehicle packed with doomed loved ones drove away. Though Li had not needed her father for quite some time, Lucien’s second disappearing act must have dragged her childhood trauma out of hibernation.

Intending to apologize, Lucien opened his mouth, but he tasted his tears instead. “I’m so sorry for putting you through this again.”

“You could not have prevented this.”

Not for the first time, Jean’s cautionary words uttered on his last night in Ballarat tortured him. _Your instincts are usually right, Lucien_. “I had misgivings. I could have said no.”

Li laced her fingers through Lucien’s. “I don’t believe that. Not when presented with a story so similar to mine, not when you could have reunited a child with his father.” She tried to smile. “I may not know you as well as either of us would like, but I know this. You have a heart that yearns to fix things, whether it is possible or not.”

Drawing a shuddering breath, Lucien squeezed his daughter’s hand. “I make problems faster than I can fix them.”

“Perhaps. But sometimes, you bear the responsibility for problems others have caused. That is futile.” She paused, allowing her words to sink in, before nodding at Mei Lin and Fitz, still slumbering across the room. “You should follow their example. The more rest you get, the faster your body can heal. And I know you long for home.”

“I do. But…” Lucien marveled at the sight of his daughter’s hand in his. The last time he held her hand, she still had dimples in her tiny fist. “Right this moment, I’m happy, here with you.”


	14. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucien and Jean reunite.

April 4, 1964

For the second time in her life, Jean found love in a garden.

The first time, she hadn’t been looking for it; she hadn’t even been ready for it. With the barest touch, Lucien had wiped the tears she cried for her Christopher, had stuttered over a proclamation of a version of her future he hoped to inhabit. When it was time to let go of his hand, after he’d lingered without grand declarations and expectations but with hope and patience, she didn’t want to let go, even if she wasn’t ready to hold on.

Not long after that, Jean fell in love with Lucien Blake. But, after only a precious few weeks of basking in the sensation, she forced herself to suppress her feelings for the protection of her heart and the tattered remains of Lucien’s marriage. _I can’t have you_ , she’d think as he reached for her arm or the small of her back, or kissed her forehead. _Why are you doing this when you know I can’t have you?_ But she knew why. He touched her for the same reason she continued to talk through cases with him. Even under their newfound constraints, even when the sight of each other summoned more pain than pleasure, Lucien just missed touching her, and Jean longed to hear his voice.

Then suddenly, she could have him, and by the time they reached the altar, Jean’s hands had gone numb from holding tight to what she wanted, determined not to let anything—the church, their enemies, Lucien’s stubborn insistence that he knew best—rip him from her again. Over time, as he showed her the world and came home every night and proved his devotion to their life together every day, her grip loosened as her confidence in the longevity of their happiness grew.

And then he slipped through her fingers.

Though Jean worked vigilantly not to believe it, that is where their story should have ended, in a familiar tragedy. She rationalized her losses adeptly. She lost her baby as a punishment for her transgression against God, she lost Christopher to one stupid fight, and if given enough time, she would have found a reason for losing Lucien as well.

But instead of finding a reason, she found Lucien.

After months of yearning and praying, there he sat, not thirty steps from her, on a bench by Li’s pond, with Ying Yue curled up in his lap. Later, she would take stock of his bruised, broken, and malnourished body. Later, she would fret over how he would heal without drowning himself in the liquor cabinet. Later, she would apologize over and over for not begging him to stay home. But in this moment, nothing mattered but holding him. Before Jean had taken two steps, Li summoned Ying Yue. At the sound of his daughter’s voice, Lucien looked up, and for the first time in over a year, Jean locked eyes with her husband, and froze.

* * *

Lucien had spent months wishing Jean into existence. On good days, or bad depending on his perspective, he could hear her voice and conjure her face in his mind’s eye, but he could not make her real. On particularly disorienting mornings, he could almost smell her floral-scented shampoo. Once, he swore that the tickle of her hair against his nose woke him. But each time, when he opened his eyes, he was alone.

Since his release from the hospital, Lucien spent much of his time taking stock of the familiar sensations he associated with the years following his release from the camps. For now, the pain killers held the nightmares at bay, but he could feel them creeping into his subconscious, when he started at every bump in the night or shadowy corner. The urge to drink, dormant while escape and survival topped his priority list, returned with ferocity, but Li did not keep alcohol in her house. Whenever he considered asking Fitz to pick up a small bottle of whisky, the thought of disappointing Jean stopped him. In the months just before this nightmare began, Lucien and Jean had a series of tiffs about his excessive drinking. Each time, he promised to drink less, and each time, he disappointed her. The memory of the surveillance photo, of the sheer despair on Jean’s face as she sat in the sunroom, fortified his resolve to never disappoint her again.

His longing for Jean, however, could not be suppressed. Throughout his ordeal, getting home to her had been his only hope, so even though he had been freed a little over a week ago, he was left unfulfilled. Despite Li and little Ying Yue’s best efforts, his freedom didn’t feel real, and he knew that it wouldn’t be until he ran his hands over every inch of Jean to persuade himself that she was real, that this was all real, that everything would be alright.

Jean would be in his arms by now if he hadn’t nearly collapsed arguing with Fitz about accompanying him to the airport. After Fitz’s departure, Li, noting her father’s restlessness, suggested that Ying Yue take her grandfather to the garden for some air. Ying Yue, eager to make her grandfather comfortable and keep him entertained, took the liberty of tucking a few snacks, her favorite books, her ballet slippers, and a blanket into her picnic basket. By the time Ying Yue had performed her latest routine, read nearly every other word in each of her storybooks, and eaten all the snacks, she and Lucien had both wilted. Lucien beckoned his granddaughter into his lap, tucked the blanket around her, and picked up the last book in the pile. _This_ , he thought, gazing down at Ying Yue, _almost feels real_.

But when he looked up, Ying Yue jumping out of his lap to heed her mother’s call, he found all he’d been missing.

_Jean._

His precious Jean immediately clapped both hands over her mouth. _Don’t cry, my love. I can’t bear to make you cry any more._ Damn the lump in his throat or he’d been able to speak. Without breaking eye contact with his wife, who remained frozen on the other side of the pond, Lucien fumbled for his cane. Though nowhere near ready to rise without aid, he’d be damned if he didn’t go to Jean, so _close_ for the first time in an eternity.

Despite his intention to bestow the bulk of his weight on his cane, he had yet not risen on his own, so almost immediately, a searing pain shot down his leg, and his eyes closed of their own volition. Gripped with a paralyzing fear of losing Jean the second he lost sight of her, he cried out her name.

After months of wishing for her, she was there, keeping him from falling.

Arms wrapped underneath his, Jean choked back her sobs. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” she gasped. “I’m here, darling. I’m here. It’s over.”

With Jean’s support, Lucien shifted his weight onto his good leg so that he could rove both hands over her back, through her hair, under her jacket, everywhere, to feel every solid inch of her. “I love you,” he said, sobbing into her neck. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt safe enough to cry, and now that he’d started, he feared he would never stop. Since his capture, Lucien refused to break down, worried that Jiang would exploit yet another one of his weaknesses. But Jean had found him. He was safe now.

Stifling her own cries, Jean pulled back just enough to rest her forehead against his. “I have waited for you for such a long time.”

With a shuddering breath, Lucien rested his palm against her damp cheek, desperate to console her and fix everything he had broken. “I’m so sorry, my darling. I’m so sorry I left you—”

“No, no, Lucien. You didn’t.” Jean nuzzled the hands cradling her face. “For all it cost you, you didn’t leave me. You’re here.” When her voice broke on the last word, Lucien leaned down, intent on kissing her, but just shy of her lips, he hesitated, shaken by an inexplicable uncertainty. _This is the end of it_ , he thought. _This is when I wake up._ When Jean likewise remained a mere breath away, he interpreted the worst from her stillness. He must have fallen asleep with Ying Yue on the bench, and he would wake once more to suffer the agony of false hope..

But as always, Jean transformed his disquiet into relief. After only a tilt of her head, her lips brushed against his. In her tentative touch, he felt her longing and answered it with his own tender caress. Ignoring the pain in his chest, he held her closer still, inhaling her sighs, her softness, her security. When Jean opened her mouth to him, he was lost, lost in the impossible softness of her lips, in the slide of her tongue against the roof of his mouth, in the salty taste of their mingled tears, in the rightness of coming home.

* * *

“There now.” Jean lifted a glass of water to Lucien’s lips. “Swallow those painkillers and you can sleep a while. You’ve had quite a morning.”

Eyelids fluttering, Lucien lolled his head to one side in a pitiful attempt to shake his head. “You’re here. Don’t want to sleep.”

Jean shushed him gently, threading her fingers through his unfamiliarly unkempt curls. “And I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here when you wake up.” She wanted to tell him not to be afraid, but such instruction felt hollow, especially since she shared his fear of shattering this reality that still felt too good to be true. She could patch up his physical wounds and take the pain away with a couple of capsules, but she couldn’t save him from his fear.

“Lie down with me?”

Uncomfortable as she was with occupying her estranged daughter-in-law’s bed, Jean could deny Lucien nothing, certainly not an opportunity to be as close to him as possible. When she settled on her side of the bed, on top of the covers, Lucien rolled onto his good side to make room for her head on his pillow and her body against his own. She fussed at him, concerned about his chest, but after only two words of rebuke, his wrinkles disappeared from his brow as he slipped into slumber.

How she’d missed being held by him. Though his hold was tenuous—only an arm slung over her hip—months spent alone intensified the sensation of his body heat, the weight of his arm, the soft puffs of his breath on her lips. Jean reached up to brush his curls out of his eyes, hoping her touch would keep him tethered to reality should any nightmares dare disturb him.

This close to him with nothing to distract her, Jean faced the changes the last year had forced on him. His hair and beard, usually neatly trimmed and meticulously brushed, had grown wild and scraggly. Judging by how his hands shook as he held her, Jean suspected that he couldn’t shave on his own, much less give himself a trim. Through sparser patches of hair, Jean glimpsed the discolored yellow of healing bruises at his jawline and cheekbones. His chest, uncovered by the top two buttons of his shirt, appeared to cave in on itself, even when his lungs filled with air. With his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, Jean ghosted her hand over the new scars on his forearms, a third smaller than they should be. According to Fitz, Li had taken impeccable care of her father in the few days that she had been charged with his care, so Jean could only image the physical state of him, to say nothing of his mental state, when he first came to her home.

Of all they must discuss, the extent of Lucien’s trauma seemed most paramount. But Jean remembered the angry man who returned to Ballarat just in time to see his father pass into the next life. For years, Lucien bottled up his pain and resentment, and it took two years of living back home, the source of so much of his pain, for him to let go. Even so, they had been married for six months before he told her about the origins of the scars that marred his back over nineteen years before. Then again, Jean had yet to tell him about the baby girl God had taken from her. Neither of them excelled in discussing what ailed them, but for Lucien’s sake, Jean knew they would both have to improve.

Before they discussed anything, Jean had to abandon this illusion that she alone could heal him. She could love him, support him, care for him in every way possible, but the healing was up to him. God, how that thought frightened her. His coping mechanisms left much to be desired. After all he’d been through already, he still had so much further to go. 

Jean stifled a yawn, but quickly realized that she was losing the battle against sleep. Rationally, she knew she needed the rest. Nearly an entire day of travelling and her constant anxiety about Lucien’s physical and mental state had drained her. Until now, adrenaline and desperation had fueled her, but lying next to him, her willpower faded. Still, she blinked rapidly, suddenly determined not to risk falling asleep only to wake up alone in Ballarat. She quickly dismissed such fears as ridiculous and unfounded, yet she threaded her fingers through Lucien’s before allowing her eyes to close.

* * *

In each nightmare, hallucination, and dream, Jean had seemed so real. On the mornings he imagined her, she lay on her side, facing him with one arm tucked beneath her pillow and the other on the bed between them. For fear of never seeing her again, Lucien guzzled every feature of her face—from the curls hiding the worry lines that remained even in slumber, to her slightly parted lips beckoning his kiss. He would wallow for as long as semi-consciousness would allow, only to lose her to a blink or a birdsong.

Groggy from his medication, Lucien stared at Jean that way now, thinking this another glorious, torturous figment of his imagination. He fought conscious thought with the same ferocity with which he fought the current of that blasted river in Sydney _. Her hair is different_ , he started to observe, but instead focused on her name, desperate not to lose her again. As he studied her lips, a more welcome intrusion was harder to suppress—a memory of the two of them, entwined like vines in Li’s garden.

But then her eyes fluttered open, and she murmured his name, which had never happened in this imagined scenario. Overcome by the confusion reflected in Jean’s eyes, he reached out, his trembling hand hovering over her cheek. Jean’s disorientation had faded more quickly than his, however, and Jean, his brave girl, pressed Lucien’s hand to her cheek.

The deep breath Jean expelled told Lucien that she needed just as much convincing as he did.

Lucien skimmed the backs of his fingers down her cheek, her jaw, her neck, and back up. “Some nights, after I’d dreamt of you, I’d wake up and see you lying next to me or feel you pressed up against me—just for a few seconds. Then…you’d be gone.”

“Oh, Lucien,” Jean whispered, bringing her hand to his face.

“I’ll never leave you again.” The words, so long confined to his heart and mind, tumbled out in a single breath. “Not for a single day.” Kissing her palm, Lucien tried not to imagine her reaction to the horrors he would eventually have to burden her with, if she reacted so viscerally to his dreams. He never questioned Jean’s strength, but fortitude could not save her from the objectivity of his unpardonable sins.

“I can hear you judging yourself, you know.” When Jean tried to smile, Lucien averted his gaze, knowing that she was trying to draw him out, to persuade him to share his burdens instead of being crushed under their weight. Her unconditional love, which normally filled him with confidence and contentment, terrified him. He felt that if he looked at Jean, she would see what he’d done, that he wouldn’t get a chance to explain before his crimes burst forth of their own volition. So when she tried to tilt his chin up, he fought her, shuffled closer and buried his face in the crook of her neck instead.

When Lucien noted a touch of resignation in her sigh, he thought she might let him off the hook for now, but she surprised him by pulling back and shimmying down until they were once again at eye level. He should have known better. When had he ever been able to hide from Jean? 

“Whatever you tell me, my love for you will never be in doubt.” Her eyes, alight with both unshed tears and the fierce determination he adored, fortified him just enough to ask the question that had been searing a hole in his stomach for days.

“What do you know?”

To her credit, his brave Jean did not look away. “That Jiang murdered several men and that you blame yourself.”

Even with his eyes open, Lucien struggled to push away the vivid images of each of Jiang’s victims, choking on their own blood or twitching even in death. Worse, he remembered his own depraved use of their senseless suffering and death to help him escape.

“Fa Wong, Cong Ruan, Kian Song, and Hai Xu,” he murmured. “I watched all of them die, except Wong. The night he died, I botched an escape attempt.” His memory of Jiang’s rage was so distinct that he squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation of a blow from which he’d already healed. And just like that, he was back in that bloody room, strapped to the chair that Jiang would eventually break in his zeal to teach Lucien a lesson. When he sucked in a sharp breath, he mistook his inhale for the sizzle off electricity burning his flesh—

“Wherever you are, come back.” Somehow, Jean managed to both command and soothe in the same breath. “You’re not there anymore. You’re here, with me, and I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.”

At the warmth of her touch on his chest, Lucien opened his eyes, momentarily marveling once again at Jean’s presence both in the room and in his life. This beautiful, precious human being allied herself with him, a reckless, drunken coward, and once again, she would be left picking up the pieces of the travesty he’d made of their lives. “I don’t deserve you.”

Jean shook her head rapidly, as if by saying the words, Lucien would disappear unless Jean reacted quickly enough. “I’ve tried living without you, and I don’t ever want to do it again.”

“You brought me back to life once, you shouldn’t have to do it again—”

Raising herself up on one elbow, Jean sealed his lips with a finger. Tear tracks streaked her cheeks, and her lower lip trembled, but she tilted her chin defiantly. “For better or worse, Lucien.”

The unmistakable pitter patter of Ying Yue’s little feet just outside his door prevented Lucien from responding. Rubbing his eyes dry with the heels of his palms, he felt the bed dip as Jean hoisted herself to a seated position.

“Ying Yue.” Li’s whisper came out as more of a hiss. “Your grandfather and his wife are sleeping—”

“We’re awake.” Lucien glanced at his wife, whose red eyes would go unnoticed by his granddaughter, and forced a smile. “And we’d love some company.”

Despite all protests to the contrary, Lucien barely made it through dinner without falling asleep with his head in his hand. His nap and the dizzying prospect of his family gathered in one house propelled him through the afternoon. He spent most of that time watching Jean bond with his family. Ying Yue quickly warmed up to Jean after she admired one of the girl’s drawings. After a blush and a smile, Ying Yue offered Jean a crayon and a blank piece of paper on which to create her own masterpiece. Li did her best to make Jean feel welcome, but the stress of the last several days had taken their toll. The day before, Gen stopped by the house, but while Li allowed him to see their daughter, Li did not speak to him unless necessary, and she refused him admittance to Lucien’s room.

While Jean and Ying Yue colored and Li busied herself with cleaning up after lunch, Lucien and Mei Lin sat across the room, discussing their daughter’s disquiet.

“I just wish she’d talk to me.”

Mei Lin fixed him with an incredulous look. “You can hardly fault her for not opening up to you, Lucien.”

“No, of course not—” He winced when he tried to sit up straighter and only succeeded in stretching his stitches. “I just want her to know that she can. Has—has she said anything to you?”

His ex-wife’s arched eyebrow confirmed that he’d stuffed his foot in his mouth again. “If she had, I would not be doing either of us any favors by sharing that information with you.”

Hands raised in surrender, Lucien nodded. “Forgive me. I overstepped. I just—she’s taken me in and sent Gen away in the span of a day, and I want to help her.”

“Then you must wait for her to ask for it.” When Lucien bowed his head with a knowing, pained half-smile, Mei Lin pressed forward. “Li is strong, but she is not too proud to ask for help. You know that. She will come to you when she is ready.”

Now, shaking himself awake for the second time in five minutes, he caught his daughter looking at him. Not staring, as she’d been prone to do over the last few days, as if the sight of him in her house genuinely shocked her, but _looking_ , as if she actually wanted something that he could give. 

But a knock at the door shattered the moment, and as Li rose to answer the door, Jean settled her hand on his knee. “It’s high time you were in bed.”

With a glance across the table at Mei Lin and Ying Yue to ensure their preoccupation, he lifted Jean’s hand from his leg and kissed it. How he’d missed her gentle chiding and prodding, all meant with love and care. “Whatever you want, my darling.”

Jean chuckled. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”

When her eyes flickered to something past Lucien’s shoulder, he turned to find his daughter, shoulders tense and lips pursed, reentering the kitchen.

“Major Fitzwilliam is waiting in the den for you.”

The presence of his old friend, one who rescued him from captivity and, most likely, murder charges, shouldn’t have produced the dread pooling in his gut. But Fitz could only bring painful news. If he’d come with news of Lucien’s exoneration, he would have announced it to the entire household, but he chose to hang back, ensuring he would speak with Lucien alone. No, whatever Fitz had come to say, it concerned Jiang. What if Jiang refused to cooperate? What if he had only implicated Lucien in the murders? What if the Chinese were forced to let him go? What if he roamed free, even now, with Lucien powerless to protect his family yet again?

When Jean squeezed his hand, Lucien forced a smile, more intent on fooling himself than anyone else. “Right. Did you tell him I’ll probably fall asleep in the chair?” His attempt at humor fell flat with the adults, but at least Ying Yue giggled.

Li and Jean both helped Lucien to his feet, but when they reached the hall, Li, confident that her father was steady on his feet, gave his arm a final squeeze and let go. Jean, undoubtedly knowing that she must follow suit, clung to his arm for a few seconds more. The thought of letting go didn’t appeal much to Lucien either, for Jean hadn’t been out of his reach for more than five minutes since their reunion.

Straightening Lucien’s collar, Jean’s fingers brushed against his neck. “I’ll wait right here for you. If you need me, for any reason, just call for me.” 

Though he nodded, Lucien counted nearly twenty of his rapid heartbeats before he slid his arm out of her grasp. _I’ll wait right here for you._ He focused on her words as he ambled down the hallway, each impact of his cane reverberating up his arm. Still, just before turning to the den doorway on his left, he risked a glance over his shoulder.

Jean remained rooted to the spot where they had parted, but now Li stood at her side. Lucien had never dared dream of that before.

“Bugger, Blake, I keep expecting you to look better.”

Lucien’s head snapped to the left, where Fitz waited, his hands in his pockets and a tired smile on his face. “Funny, I’ve thought the same thing about you for years now.” Despite his teasing, Lucien noticed that Fitz had run himself ragged, undoubtedly for his friend’s benefit. Dark circles cast shadows under his eyes, and with his uniform jacket folded carefully over the back of the couch, the wrinkles in his button-down stood out like stains.

After watching his friend take two pitiful steps, Fitz strode over to help him to the nearest piece of furniture, the leafy-green chair that wasn’t nearly as comfortable as it looked. By the time Fitz sunk onto the couch adjacent to Lucien, the source of his worries had wiped any trace of levity from his face.

After about ten seconds of watching Fitz stare off into space, Lucien spoke up. “You’re scaring me, Fitz.”

Lost in his own thoughts, Fitz started at Lucien’s voice. Muttering an apology, he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “The good news is that you’re exonerated. Jiang is going down for everything. He’ll never see the light of day again.”

Honestly, before Fitz’s foreboding arrival, Lucien hadn’t thought much about the possibility of his indictment. Between his recovery and his longing for Jean, his mind had been otherwise occupied. Fitz assured him from the beginning that he would not suffer the consequences of Jiang’s actions, but judging from Fitz’s haggard appearance, it took more work than he let on. Still, with one of the many horrid possibilities eliminated, he expelled a deep breath.

“Thank you.” It was all he could think to say, but it reeked of inadequacy. The physical distance between them meant their friendship lay dormant for years, but Fitz still dedicated himself to Lucien’s cause as they had only just made their pact. “Fitz, I—I don’t know—”

Fitz held up a hand. “We had a deal, you and me. You would have done the same.” When he next spoke, he lowered his voice, making Lucien wonder if Fitz knew that Jean and Li lurked in the hallway. “The interrogators refused to take the advice you gave me until all other avenues had been explored.”

Even after the hell Jiang put Lucien through, the idea of Jiang suffering from those _other avenues_ sent a shudder through Lucien. “But he has seen his son?”

“Yesterday.”

_Then it wasn’t all for nothing_. The only moderately acceptable outcome of Jiang’s mad plan was the brief reunion of Jiang and his son, though Lucien wondered if Gen thought of the reunion as _acceptable_. The poor boy would have a lot to process, and he hoped that once Li knew all of the particulars, she would invite her husband back into their home to heal.

“How did that go?”

“I’m not sure. I was—elsewhere,” Fitz admitted. “He came by yesterday, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but Li wouldn’t let me speak to him,” Lucien sighed.

Fitz hummed noncommittally, staring out the window again. The bad news still weighed on him, and with Jiang in prison for the rest of his life after a visit with his son, Lucien couldn’t work out what horror he still had to relay.

“What aren’t you telling me? What do you have to say that the rest of the family can’t hear?”

With great effort, Fitz met Lucien’s gaze. “Jiang was killed. Shot in the head in the Chinese military prison where he was being held.”

Lucien felt his cheeks warm as his blood rushed to his face. “They wouldn’t dare.”

“That’s what we thought,” Fitz said. “Which is why we agreed not to fight the Chinese on the jurisdiction issue. As long as my department had a hand in the interrogation, we were satisfied. We could have gotten confessions for any number of unsolved murders, but after his latest crimes, I suppose the Chinese thought he was too much of a liability.”

While he could not dispute the validity of Fitz’s argument, all Lucien could remember was his conversation with Jiang about their children, the resignation in his voice when he admitted that his son would him as a monster. Perhaps that resignation stemmed from a knowledge of his fate. Seeing his son was the endgame, whether as a free man or a condemned one. He never planned on getting caught, but he must have known that he could use information as leverage to get what he wanted. Certainly not freedom, but at the very least, one last audience with his boy, during which he could not begin to explain away the decades of absence or the lifetime of murder and depravity.

With the news of the death of a man who threatened everything Lucien held dear, came not relief, but ire. “They created the monster he became, Fitz.”

Fitz opened his mouth, possibly to argue, but hung his head instead. “I know.”

“They made him believe everything he lived for was gone. They used him till there was nothing left but rage and violence and misery, and when he outlived his usefulness, they put him down like a bloody dog.” He needed to move, to pace, but in the absence of that ability, he satisfied himself with tightening his fist until his fingernails dug into his palms. The irrationality of his anger did nothing but fuel his confusion and frustration. He should be celebrating his family’s safety and his freedom, but the injustice burned him from the inside out.

“We all came out of the war broken, Blake.” Fitz’s voice, meant to douse Lucien in reason, had the opposite effect. “We may have gone off our rockers once or twice, but we didn’t go on a killing spree.”

“Because we had a bloody choice.” His voice echoed off the walls in Li’s den, but he didn’t care who heard him now. “We _chose_ to stay in the service after we were freed from those bloody camps. We _chose_ when to walk away. We were given the opportunity to move on from our devastating losses and try to make a life out of what remained.”

Lucien fumbled for his cane and used every ounce of his strength to rise, blocking out Fitz’s cries of protest. He had to get out of this room, this house, this country, as far away from this travesty and trauma as he possibly could. He had to get home, to Jean, before she lost her again. Before Fitz could reach him, he took a step, his blasted leg crumbled under his weight, and he fell back into the chair.

In the end, the blinding pain prevented him from knowing whether he called out to Jean or if she merely came running at the sound of the commotion. Either way, she materialized above him like the angel he knew her to be.

“It’s alright, Lucien.” She leaned down, taking his face in her hands, and he nearly wept at the relief of her touch, cool, soothing, grounding. “I’m here.”


	15. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucien and Jean come home.

April 25, 1964

The bus driver’s carelessness, not a horror of his subconscious, roused Lucien from his light slumber. His head bounced against the window as one of the bus’s back wheels emerged from the pothole the driver mowed over. Wincing, he rubbed his forehead and turned to check on Jean, hoping to find her sleeping, undisturbed. Mercifully, only her hair had moved, obscuring her face. Lucien tucked the screen of her hair behind her ear with a feather-light touch. A glance at his watch revealed that she had only been asleep for a couple of hours, and within an hour, they would arrive at the Ballarat bus station, where Matthew would be waiting to take them home.

During the last three weeks of his convalescence, with Jean at his side, Lucien began to feel more at home. His fears of losing her gradually abated with each miraculous dawn when he opened his eyes to find her sleeping next to him. However, even surrounded by the love and care of his wife, Li, Ying Yue, and Mei Lin, he missed Australia. Jean had been his home for so long that he’d forgotten how it felt to long for a place as he did for Ballarat, for the studio where he and Jean had only just begun to properly build a life together, for the sunroom Jean had been mistress of long before Lucien came home, for the dining room brimming with friends.

When he asked after Alice, Jean explained—or confessed, rather—that Alice earned the appointment of police surgeon. Alice had not been born with the privilege of either wealth, a Y chromosome, or conventional beauty. She worked three times harder than he ever had, and a more deserving person simply did not exist. The real surprise came when she revealed that Matthew and Alice were stepping out together. Judging by the way she skirted his gaze when he pressed her for details, their relationship was serious. With the felicity of this news came regret that he’d missed so much of life back home, but he found comfort in the fact that their lives didn’t stop in his absence. Occasionally, Jean dropped a name he didn’t recognize—Peter or Bonnie or Margaret—and the idea of Jean making new friends left Lucien more grateful than ever. His darling was never meant to be alone.

Jean encouraged him to be as open and demonstrative as possible, but his first lie fell seamlessly from his lips when she told him about Nicholas, the baby he glimpsed growing in his mother’s stomach, the baby whose life he endangered, the baby whose very name lifted Jean’s spirits. As much as she loved Amelia and doted on Ying Yue, raising two boys left Jean longing for a grandson to spoil far more than she could afford to spoil his father. So after a particularly nasty nightmare, with his head in her lap and her fingers combing through his sweat-soaked hair, she told him that Ruby gave birth to a baby boy, now about six months old, but he couldn’t meet her gaze. _Oh, Jean_ , he’d murmured. _That’s marvelous. What a wonderful surprise._

For several nights after he learned of Huan Jiang’s execution, Lucien slept fitfully, despite the narcotics. Every night, before he closed his eyes, he needed Jean near to find the courage to sleep, Ghosts long gone visited him in this new hell he’d created for himself. Instead of Ruan, Derek Alderton lay on blood-soaked sheets while Lucien, not Jiang, pushed him to the brink of death and yanked him back to a miserable life. When Fitz sat across from him in Li’s den, he delivered the news of Li’s death, not Jiang’s. One night, he woke screaming for Nicholas, whose dream counterpart drowned in Sydney. He paid for his lie that night, when he had to explain to Jean why Nicholas plagued his nightmares only a couple of days after Lucien supposedly learned of the child’s existence.

But Jean was always there when he opened his eyes, reminding him how to breathe, whispering in his ear to ground him to reality, and when he was ready, she listened. Sometimes he fell back to sleep in her arms, but as both the nightmares and Jean’s gently probing questions increased in frequency, he introduced her to his nightmares, terror by terror. His heart ached every time her silence gave way to a shuddering inhale or sniffle, but she waved off his concern as deftly as she fended off his questions about her life over the last year. As always, she prioritized her loved one’s needs above her own. When he married her, he swore that she would always come first.

Another broken promise.

Jean’s sleepy sigh drew Lucien’s attention to the present, and he froze, hoping she would settle; she needed the rest, perhaps more than he did. He knew that he needed help recovering, both physically and emotionally, but after only three weeks, his burdens had already exhausted her. What little sleep she snatched did her no good. Once, in the middle of the day, he happened upon Jean and Ying Yue napping in the rocking chair in the den, an unfinished book in the child’s grasp. Part of him thought that going home would eliminate some of the strain, but eventually he accepted that as a wish, not a fact. His dependence on her would not change after a trip across the ocean.

One morning, about a week after Jean came to China, Fitz picked Jean up early so that she could contact Matthew at the embassy. Li didn’t have a telephone, and Fitz’s superiors were falling all over themselves to atone for ignoring Fitz’s suspicions about Jiang. Apparently, Jean hoped to be back before Lucien woke, but when she arrived, Lucien had been awake and hysterical for ten minutes. Such dependence wasn’t healthy, and for Lucien, the most important part of his recovery would be freeing Jean from that particular tether. Even now, on the last leg of their arduous journey home, the memory of his terror that morning left him gingerly threading his trembling fingers through Jean’s and laying their joined hands in his lap. These days, his hands were only steady when occupied this way.

The day after she arrived in Shanghai, Jean cut Lucien’s scraggly hair and offered to help him shave. Desperate for some normalcy and independence, he insisted on shaving himself. With a brief, wary glance at his hands, Jean kissed the top of his head and removed the sheet she’d pinned around his neck in lieu of a barber’s cloak. As he applied his shaving cream, he focused on the sensations—the cool, frothy substance against his skin, the familiar smell he associated with their bathroom at home—but his bloody hands never stopped shaking. _No matter. Try again_. Lips pursed in determination, Lucien lifted the razor to his face, ignored his unsteady hand, and cut himself on the first swipe. Hissing and cursing, Lucien thrust the razor in the sink and slumped back in his chair.

Jean, anticipating this disaster, grabbed the washcloth on the sink and pressed the corner to the expanding dot of blood on Lucien’s cheek. “Hold that just there.” Her patronizing tone, while unintended, grated on Lucien’s nerves.

Refusing to look at her, Lucien wordlessly complied while Jean washed the blood and cream off the razor. _In sickness and in health_ was all well and good at the altar, but Lucien never intended for Jean to take care of him this way, the way she cared for his father.

“Darling?”

When Lucien didn’t lift his eyes, Jean crooked a finger under his chin and tilted his face toward hers. Tears would have been easier to face than the adoration and empathy he found in her eyes. No matter what Lucien thought, she _wanted_ to care for him. “Will you let me?”

In response to his jerky nod, Jean dragged the second stool she’d undoubtedly brought for this very purpose close to Lucien and helped him turn to face her. As she reached for the razor, Lucien intercepted her hand and wiping the shaving cream from her finger with the clean end of his washcloth. _I want to take care of you_ , he wanted to say. _Can you feel that?_

Before she raised the razor to his jaw, she rested her hand on the side of his neck, where the tight muscles jumped and his pulse quickened under her palm. While he knew Jean held the blade, he could only focus on the gleam of the weapon that he had no control over. 

“Look at me,” she whispered. His eyes remained fixed on the razor for only a second before finding safe harbor in Jean’s face. “I won’t hurt you.”

Lucien nodded quickly, as if ashamed by his reticence, and covered Jean’s hand on his neck with his own.

As she worked, he never tore his eyes from her face, but she didn’t dare risk a glance at him for fear of accidentally cutting him and breaking her promise. But with each swipe of the blade, the tension in Lucien’s neck and shoulders abated, and gradually, Jean breathed easier too. However, she focused so intently on the task that after Lucien washed the excess cream from his face and turned to her, she nearly gasped. A look in the mirror revealed a face still too drawn, eyes shrouded in an unfamiliar darkness, cheekbones too prominent, but when he smiled at her, he felt more like himself than he had in a year.

“Better?” he murmured.

Jean hummed and surprised him by capturing his lips in a kiss. She sighed when he opened his mouth to hers, and he reached up to caress the smooth skin of her jaw. When his tongue traced the roof of her mouth, Jean allowed them a few precious seconds of roaming hands before pulling away. Resting her forehead against his, she smiled when he nuzzled her. “Much better, Lucien.”

* * *

When Lucien returned to Ballarat a mere week before his father’s death, the rain only added to his dismal mood. Then, he only returned out of an obligation to the man his mother loved, to the man who supposedly once loved him. That night, he’d been one of only five morose passengers on a much older, more rickety bus, and no one waited for him at the platform. After the other four passengers disembarked, Lucien rose, flipping up the collar of his coat, and moseyed down the steps to wait for the one taxi driver in town to take him to his father’s house.

Now, as soon as the bus rumbled into the town limits, Lucien gazed out the window at the familiar buildings as they drove through the streets of Ballarat, grateful for these glimpses of home. With Jean’s face tucked into the crook of his neck, he didn’t dare crane his neck to see over the heads of the lucky passengers on the other side of the aisle, with a better view of the people waiting under the awning at the bus station. Matthew Lawson, his best friend, would be among them, and Lucien planned to wrap his arms around his oldest friend as soon as could reach him. Perhaps a display of affection combined with his injury would delay the inevitable ass kicking Matthew would unleash on him for hurting Jean.

Despite his caution, Jean’s eyelashes fluttered against his neck as the bus slowed for a traffic light. As she lifted her head and straightened her hair with a self-conscious smile, Lucien remembered the way she woke in their own bed, pressed against him, her body warm as she stretched and hummed—

“Whatever you’re thinking about,” Jean whispered, her left eyebrow arched, “stop it.”

Lucien grinned when she failed to hide her smile as she dug in her purse for her mirror. While the last few weeks afforded him more miracles than he deserved, he’d missed these moments of levity and playfulness with Jean. He longed for the day that she would smile more easily than she worried.

As the bus slowed to a stop in front of the small crowd of eager friends and family, Jean rested her hand on Lucien’s leg, the muscles tense under her palm. “We should wait till the crowd thins out. Your leg is going to be stiff.”

Though he nodded and patted Jean’s hand, Lucien hardly heard her. His eyes flitted from one gap in the crowd to another, hoping to catch a glimpse of his Matthew. Of course, Jean made the right call by insisting that she and Lucien be the last to disembark. The crowd would be dispersed by then, giving the trio a modicum of privacy. Lucien was an emotionally demonstrative man, but Matthew carefully guarded the emotions that indicated vulnerability. Matthew Lawson, bullied and humiliated and manipulated as a child, refused to give anyone a reason to disrespect him. He gave anger, outrage, and resentment free reign, especially on the job where these emotions gave him an edge. But he kept relief, happiness, and love on a tight leash.

At last, the last passenger rose, and Jean slid out of her seat and extended her hand to him. After lots of cursing on Lucien’s side and patience on Jean’s, they reached the bus door, too narrow for them to exit together. “Think you can manage these steps on your own?” Jean spoke close to his ear, so when he turned to give his answer, Jean leaned back to keep their noses from brushing together.

“’Course I can,” Lucien said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Rationally, he knew that needing help to walk was part of rehabilitation, but the dreadfully awful patient in him grumbled every time someone asked if he could manage a menial task. Standing just behind him, Jean’s hands hovered over his arm, prepared to seize it if he stumbled. With one hand Lucien gripped his cane until his knuckles whitened, and with the other, he reached for the railing. Before he could grasp the railing, however, a small, familiar hand intercepted his.

Mattie, eyes alight but brimming with tears, gazed up at them from two steps below. “Need some help, there?” 

Behind him, Jean gasped Mattie’s name, but Lucien only managed the first syllable before the lump in his throat prevailed. Mattie, with her hair done up like the women on the tele and in the magazines, with her life on another continent, with her dreams and ambitions, couldn’t possibly be here— _shouldn’t_ be here—but before he could attempt to speak, Mattie had already helped him down the steps and thrown her arms around his neck. The greeting he expected from her never came, so for a while, they stood this way, tears staining both their cheeks as Lucien rocked Mattie back and forth.

When he opened his eyes he noticed Matthew, leaning against the awning pole, one hand stuffed in his pocket and the other holding tight to his cane. At first, Lucien couldn’t read Matthew’s expression, but as Mattie let Lucien go to greet Jean, Matthew straightened, and Lucien could see the tension in his jaw. Without bothering to decide if the tension came from anger or restraint, he took a few tentative steps toward him.

“I suppose this is the part where you kick my ass.”

Matthew’s tight smile was brief. “I don’t know. I think a couple bullets about covers it.”

Lucien could only bear the strained silence for a few seconds. “How’s Alice?”

For whatever reason, his question made Matthew smile and shake his head. “Working.” After this concise answer, he straightened and closed the distance between them in a few strides. Before Matthew could speak again, Lucien wrapped his arms around his oldest friend.

“Bloody hell, Blake.” Matthew’s voice lacked its usual steadiness.

“I’m sorry.” After so many, this apology sounded almost hollow, but he had to start somewhere. “Thank you for looking after Jean. I’ll spend the rest of my life repaying you.”

“You came back. That’s all we wanted.” With a final squeeze, Matthew released Lucien, blinking rapidly, and nodded to Mattie and Jean, who chatted and gesticulated with the familiarity of friends parted only days instead of months. “Better round them up before people see you and start asking questions.” After squeezing his friend’s arm, Matthew approached Mattie and Jean, who simply converted their conversation for a commute, linking their arms and lowering their voices, and arranged for the luggage boy to take the trunks to his car.

When they reached Lucien, however, they broke their link to stand on either side of Lucien. “Ready, Doctor?” Mattie asked, her cheeks pink and shiny with dried tears.

With a quick nod, Lucien moved on to more important matters. “How long can you stay?” Try as he might, Lucien could not keep the pleading note from his voice, and he averted his gaze.

But Mattie only slid her arm through Lucien’s and squeezed it, in a silent order to meet her gaze. “A week, at the very least.” 

“They won’t miss you at work?” Jean asked.

“I’m head nurse, and I’m afforded more privileges than I had here in Ballarat,” Mattie explained. “I’m only too happy to pull rank to come home.” With a grin that hadn’t changed a bit, she ignored Jean’s half-hearted chiding and gave Lucien a peck on the cheek.

As they approached Matthew’s car, the luggage boy caught up with them, asking where to drop the bags. While Mattie directed him, Jean gently tugged on Lucien’s arm, guiding him around to the passenger side of Matthew’s police car. “She’s missed you,” she whispered. “And I’m rather glad to have her here to help me take care of you when you get rebellious.”

Lucien beamed down at his wife, the setting Ballarat sun casting shadows on her face. “I’m no match for the both of you.”

With Mattie for company, the ride home was far livelier than Lucien imagined it on the journey to Ballarat. Jean and Mattie carried most of the conversation from the backseat, and only occasionally did Matthew or Lucien have to contribute a one-word answer. For his part, Lucien was transfixed by the joy and relief in his wife’s voice. With Mattie, Jean didn’t have to be on alert, as she did around him. As he recovered physically, the burden of constant vigilance would be lifted from her shoulders, but Lucien feared how long it would take for her to be constantly at ease in his company, for her to sleep through the night, for her to turn to him for support. One of many intentions for their first days home was getting to the bottom of the sighs Jean thought he couldn’t hear, the tears on her pillow, the trembling of her own hands. He refused to take center stage in a trauma that scarred the person most dear to him.

The shift from pavement to gravel signified the proximity to No. 7 Mycroft Avenue. Not since his first holidays home from boarding school had he so looked forward to seeing his home. While that his aloof, emotionally illiterate father dashed little boy’s hopes, Lucien knew that he would come home with the love of his wife, a blessing he would never be without. So when he felt Jean’s touch on his shoulder as they drove through the open gate, he held fast to her hand, relying on her presence to ground him to this reality, where he sat in a car with loved ones, gazing on a house he feared he’d never see again.

When Matthew wrestled the gear shift into park, Jean leaned forward, her lips brushing against his ear. “Welcome home, Lucien.”


	16. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The healing begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're at the end, folks. Thank you to everyone for reading, reviewing, leaving kudos, adding this to you favorites list--you are all phenomenal. 
> 
> escapewithstories, we did it, and I'm so damn grateful for you.

April 25, 1964 

After watching Lucien’s deep, even breaths for far longer than necessary, Jean rose from her chair next to their bed, bestowed a lingering kiss on his forehead, and smoothed the blankets one more time before leaving his side. Thankfully, he’d either been too happy, too exhausted, or both to notice the changes in their bedroom, like the stiffness of the curtains or the lack of clutter on her bedside table. Mattie made herself invaluable almost immediately by talking Lucien into taking his medication and lying down for _just a tick_. The way his medicine affected him, they’d have to wake him in an hour so that he didn’t sleep until after dinner.

When Mattie suggested that they have tea in the kitchen while Lucien slept, the panic on Jean’s face must have seeped through her mask. Just as quickly as she suggested it, Mattie decided that bringing a tray in the studio would be much better. Now, she waited for Jean across the room, scooping mounds of sugar into Jean’s tea, and when she approached, the young woman smiled, almost too brightly.

“Are you sure you don’t want to lie down, Jean?” she whispered, handing the delicate cup and saucer to her friend.

“No, I slept on the bus.” As she sipped her tea, she watched Mattie prepare her own cuppa, worrying at her lip and creasing new worry lines in her forehead. As long as Jean had known her, Mattie had never been a carefree girl, having decided against her parents’ wishes in favor of pursuing an education in a field dominated by men. But only in the darkest of times, during the last month of Thomas Blake’s life, Lucien’s most drunken fits, the frustrating fights with her father, and the days before Jean left Ballarat for Adelaide, had Mattie looked so troubled.

“You’ve got that look on your face.” The light in Mattie’s whisper offered some consolation. In response to Jean’s inquisitive hum, Mattie said, “The one that says you’re worrying about me even though I’m old enough to make my _own_ decisions.”

Stifling a laugh, Jean set her too sweet tea on the coffee table in front of the couch. “Which one caved? Danny or Charlie?”

Mattie nearly snorted into her cup. “Danny. All I had to do was start sniffling and he coughed up your entire travel itinerary.” Though Jean laughed quietly, Mattie’s mischief fled when her gaze shifted to Lucien. “They wanted to be here, but we all discussed it when I arrived in Melbourne yesterday, and we agreed that it might be…overwhelming for Lucien for us all to come at once.”

In the silence, even the soft clink of Mattie’s saucer on the table sounded loud enough to wake him.

Jean could feel it coming, the tsunami of relief and sorrow and pain that devastated her at its leisure. “Oh, Mattie.” She brought a hand to her mouth to keep more words from pouring out, and Mattie took her other hand in both of hers. “He’s been through so much, and even though I know I can’t fix everything, I _want_ to, more than anything.”

Ducking her head to meet Jean’s downturned gaze, Mattie squeezed Jean’s hand. “No, but you _are_ helping. And you aren’t alone in this. We’re all here for you both.”

“Lucien is the one who needs our help—”

“And you can’t help him if you aren’t taken care of. Are you sleeping?”

Memories of her darling’s thrashing and cries in the night washed over Jean like a flood and stole her breath, so for a moment, she could only shake her head. She lowered her shaking hand on top of Mattie’s. “His nightmares are…worse than they ever were, except maybe when he first came to Ballarat. Sometimes, when he’s having a night terror or a bad dream, I can’t bring him back.”

“Oh, Jean.” When Jean looked in Mattie’s pleading eyes, she saw less of the young woman who found Jean crying on the couch all those years ago, of the pretty young thing who still thought that life was kind. “Maybe we should go up to my room so you can let some of this out—”

“No, he can’t wake up and not know where I am.” The desperation in her whisper alarmed even herself, so in the face of Mattie’s wide eyes, Jean sighed. “Mattie, when he first wakes up he—he sometimes forgets where he is.”

Mattie’s distress did not dissipate, but her understanding momentarily overpowered it. “Jean, there are doctors now that specialize in treating this kind of trauma.”

Jean shook her head. No matter how many patients Lucien advised to seek therapy over the years, the likelihood of him taking his own advice was slim. Even if his pride and impatience with himself didn’t forbid it, the best psychiatrists practiced far from Ballarat, and how could she ask him to leave home again when he woke, petrified and lost, next to his own wife? “Even if those doctors were nearby, you know Lucien wouldn’t go for it.”

“I agree he would need some convincing, but when he realizes how much you’re affected by this, I think he would realize this the best option.”

“He feels guilty enough without taking the blame for my inability to cope.”

“If I were in your position, would you tell me that it was my own fault that I wasn’t coping well enough?” Mattie’s shimmering eyes revealed that, no matter what she intended, she needed the comfort now. Even though she’d seen more of the world and all its horrors, sweet Mattie, who dropped everything to take care of them, had not been prepared to see Lucien like this. The last time Mattie saw him, he’d twirled her around a dance floor on the eve of a milestone birthday she’d come to celebrate back home. Their time apart never affected the joy and ease of their reunions, like a father and daughter united against propriety and expectations.

How much more altered must he seem to Mattie, with only memories like those to paint her expectations with for the last year?

“No.” Jean freed her hands from Mattie’s only to wrap her in the warm, comforting embrace that benefited them both. “Never.”

Mattie shook with the effort of keeping her cries quiet, so Jean rubbed her back in a slow, soothing rhythm. After taking a few steadying breaths, Mattie trusted herself to speak. “I’m supposed to be comforting _you_ , making things easier for you.”

“Oh, my sweet girl,” Jean sighed. “You _are_ making things easier. I’m so grateful you’re here to help me.”

Mattie’s hold on Jean tightened. “We’ve all got a lot of healing to do.”

* * *

When they woke Lucien for dinner, he persuaded Mattie and Jean to let him enjoy his first dinner at home in the kitchen, instead of tucked away in bed. Since he woke to the smiling face of his wife instead of a nightmare, his pleasant, almost cheerful mood persisted, but Jean knew that he only wanted to put on a jovial face for Mattie. Naturally, coming home gave him some peace and joy, but in the last month, Jean only witnessed this many smiles and attempts at laughter in the presence of Ying Yue, on whom Lucien was desperate to leave a positive lasting impression. Gradually, however, Mattie grew quieter and less enthusiastic, so she must have noticed the farce of his disposition.

By the time they finished their meal, Lucien’s head rested a bit too comfortably in his palm. As Mattie rose and collected their dishes, Jean took his free hand in hers. Surprised when he didn’t stir, Jean prompted him with a soft murmur of his name.

“Hmm?”

“What about calling it an early night?” 

Lucien’s drowsy gaze ambled to Mattie, who had just turned on the faucet. “But Mattie’s here.”

Jean skimmed her hand over his forearm. “And she’ll be here tomorrow.” _No one’s going anywhere_.

Lucien shot her that sheepish smile that made her want to kiss his embarrassment away. “Quite right.”

At the sound of a knock at the door, Mattie turned off the tap. “I’ll get that.”

Jean thanked Mattie as she passed, and when she turned back to Lucien, his gaze was already fixed on her. She almost asked him what was wrong, but his wistful smile put her at ease. Nothing was wrong, for the first time in so long. Now, sitting together in their kitchen, Jean basked in her husband’s adoration, and _God_ how she’d missed this, smiling when she caught him staring and holding his hand over the kitchen table, rather than clinging to the stale sensations of memories.

The thud of the closed door snapped them both out of their reveries, and they prepared to greet an exhausted, irritable, and hungry Matthew Lawson. Instead, Alice Harvey, white as a sheet, with pursed lips and a vice grip on her handbag, stood frozen on the other side of the serving hatch. Mattie stood at her side, eyes flitting from Alice to Lucien to Jean, holding her breath until someone made the first move.

“You fell over thirty feet.” Even after Alice broke the silence, no one knew how to respond. “Thirty feet into freezing water and jagged rocks.”

Lucien, now facing his right so that he could look Alice in the eyes, nodded slowly. “It…wasn’t pleasant.”

 _Oh, Lucien_.

“ _Wasn’t pleasant_?” Alice snapped. “It’s impossible to survive.”

“Apparently not.” Lucien’s foolhardy attempt to lighten the mood only roused a huff and a glare from Alice. “If you’d…come sit down with me, I can tell you how I did it.”

Lower lip trembling, Alice slowly shook her head and took a step back, and Jean cursed herself for not telling Alice herself and cursed Matthew for letting her confront this alone. More than any of them, Alice truly believed she’d lost Lucien to that river, mourned him accordingly, moved on as best she could. And now all that anger, devastation, guilt, resignation, and acceptance had collapsed all around her, out of sequence and without adequate explanation. Alice Harvey did not deal in miracles.

“That’s alright,” Lucien murmured. “I can tell you from right here.” 

“Why do you assume that I want those particulars?”

“I—I don’t know. I thought it might—” He broke off, glancing back at Jean as if she could salvage this. “I thought it might make you feel better.”

“Why in God’s name would that make me feel _better_?”

“I’m—sorry. I’m not saying any of the right things, am I?”

Even with her eyes welling, Alice managed a small smile. “I suppose that’s how I should know it’s really you.” Squaring her shoulders as if gearing up for a fight, she stepped forward, rested her handbag on the hatch’s ledge, and rounded the corner into the kitchen. Before Lucien could turn around, she stood in front of him, one hand outstretched in an invitation, a challenge not to Lucien but to her own disbelief.

Only when he covered her hand with both of his did she allow her shoulders to droop, her breath to release, and her tears to fall.

* * *

Within fifteen minutes of Alice’s arrival, Matthew joined them, having delegated the remaining tasks to his junior officers. He seemed surprised to find Alice in the kitchen, leading Jean to believe that no matter what his plan for Alice’s reunion with Lucien had been, Alice ignored it. At first, Jean worried that Lucien would find so much company overstimulating, but his friends’ presence revitalized him. Matthew had only just sat down with his plate before Lucien goaded him about his relationship with Alice, whose ring finger remained bare. Their matching blushes, however, eradicated any concern Jean felt for the strength of their mutual adoration. 

To her surprise, Jean’s fatigue nearly overcame her. She knew when she ignored Mattie’s suggestion to lay down that she would pay for it later, but she expected it to be much later than half past seven. With his hand on her shoulder, Lucien woke her from a daze and repeated his desire to turn in. One by one, Alice, Matthew, and Mattie bid them adieu, and Jean helped her husband down the hall to their bedroom.

As she closed the door behind them, Jean’s conscience nipped at her heels. _Tell him where you’ve been sleeping before he figures it out on his own_.

But then she turned and he intercepted her, wrapping one arm around her waist and pulling her close and brushing his nose against hers, and she couldn’t open her mouth for fear of ruining this perfection. They swayed like this for a few moments, foreheads touching and eyes closed, until Lucien kissed her, and _oh_ , suddenly opening her mouth wasn’t such a terrible idea. They couldn’t go much further than this, not for another week, but when he traced the roof of her mouth with his tongue, she let herself imagine taking her darling to bed, kissing every inch of his skin, healing him with her touch.

She broke off with a gasp when his hand migrated from the small of her back down to her bum, but she softened the blow by sliding her lips against his neck, smiling when he hummed.

“Suppose I shouldn’t start something I can’t finish.” 

Kissing her way up his neck, Jean sighed. “Soon.”

“Will you come sit with me by then fire? Just for a few minutes. I don’t think it’s such a good idea for you to dress me for bed just yet.”

Giggling, Jean pulled away, just enough to catch the light in his eyes when he flashed her a wicked grin. Moments like this, sensual and playful, had been few and far between, and for a moment, Jean allowed herself to bask in it.

Lucien, however, not willing to let her slip away just yet, took a step forward, intent on backing her against the door, but he put too much weight on his bad leg and nearly buckled.

Jean hit the door with a thud as he fell into her, and she wrapped her arms under his to keep him upright. “I’ve got you. Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Lucien snapped, relying on his cane and the hand braced against the door to push himself up. He sighed heavily. “Forgive me. I’m not cross with you.”

“I know,” Jean said, even though she needed to hear it. She reached up to stroke his cheek, relieved when he offered her a small smile. “Come, sit with me.”

They eased down on the couch together, but Lucien immediately scooted to the right, carefully draping his legs over the arm of the couch, and eased down with a groan, resting his head in Jean’s lap. Gazing up at her, he kissed her palm. “Much better.”

His tenderness made her ache, and as usual, he saw right through her.

“What’s wrong?”

His concern only deepened her guilt at having put off this conversation for so long. In Shanghai, another topic to discuss or a truth to confront appeared around every corner—Lucien’s part in the murders, Jiang’s execution, Ying Yue’s next dance recital, the recovery and rehabilitation plan, Li’s marriage, news from home. These topics put a comfortable distance between Jean and her confession. In the face of so many other problems and occasional joys, the studio didn’t matter.

But since they entered the studio a few hours before, her confession wormed its way, word by word, around her throat. Just when she thought she could admit it, Lucien needed to rest or she needed to talk with Mattie or Lucien said something so unbelievably sweet she could cry. Each time she put it off, the chain of words tightened, and by now she wanted to scream.

 _I_ _’m as bad as your father._

_I couldn’t bear to be here without you._

_I locked away our memories and dreams and moved back into the shadows._

She did not understand the difficulty in professing this truth. Of all the harsh realities she and Lucien faced together, of all the emotional upheaval of the last month, why did telling him that she’d shut up the studio weigh on her so? Every time she helped him dress or bathe, the horrors of his trauma and anguish screamed at her without either of them saying a word. She could face that. Why couldn’t she face this?

 _Quit lying to yourself_. The same voice that once told Lucien to stop wallowing in self-pity taunted her now. _You know why. He’ll think you gave up on him. He thought of you to survive captivity and torture, and you buried memories of your life together to survive daily life._

She could handle her guilt, rationalize it in the light of day after a good night’s rest, but she could not bear his disappointment. When she looked down at him now, where his head rested on her thighs, at his adoring and understanding gaze, she took her hand from his grasp and pressed her palms against her eyes.

“I couldn’t stay here without you—I’m so sorry.” The words stumbled out, stuttering and tripping over each other to catch up. Underneath her, she felt his head leave her lap and the couch cushions shift as he sat up, but she refused to peel her hands away. Even with the words uttered, the thought of his anguish kept the chain tight around her neck. “I locked up this room and moved into your old bedroom because I couldn’t stand the memories we made her, _mocking_ me, but I had to be near you. I slept in your robe until it smelled more like me than like you, but I couldn’t stay here.” She’d confessed, but she still couldn’t breathe.

“Jeanie, look at me—”

“You have every right to feel angry and betrayed—”

“I’m not. Jean, look at me, please?”

Lucien wrapped her wrists in his scarred hands and with a gentle tug, he helped her face him. In his eyes, she found not a trace of the disappointment she’d feared, only regret born from his desire to take all her problems away. Slowly, the stunted, shuddering gasps evened out until she could hear Lucien’s voice over her breath.

“It’s alright, Jean.”

“But your father—”

“My father was grieving,” he said. “I can fault him for many things, but hiding from the memories in this room is not one of them.” Sliding his arm around her shoulders, he murmured, “Give here, love.”

“I don’t want to hurt you—” After months of longing only to be in Lucien’s arms, she couldn’t believe she was arguing with him.

“You won’t. Let me hold you.”

God, she’d missed this, folding her legs over his lap, nuzzling him just below his collar bone, being surrounded by him—the warmth of his hands rubbing up and down her back, the gentle rise and fall of his chest with each breath, the taste of his skin as she kissed his chest. They’d held one another this way in Shanghai, but now they were entwined at home, in their bedroom, back where they belong. 

“I didn’t forget, Lucien,” she whispered. “I didn’t _want_ to forget our life together; I just couldn’t handle the constant…assault. One minute, I’d be sitting on this couch, and the next I’d be in tatters because I remembered what it was like for you to hold me like this, and I’d feel so alone.”

“You will never be alone again.”

“Please don’t promise me that. Not after what we’ve been through.”

“I don’t mean that. Of course I can’t make promises like that anymore, but Jean—” When his voice broke on her name, Jean kissed his neck again and buried her face in the smudges of lipstick. “I’ve neglected you, ever since you found me.”

“You’ve done no such thing.”

“I have.” He held her tighter, his breath kissing her forehead. “You couldn’t even look at me because you were so afraid that I’d resent you for grieving, and that’s because we haven’t talked very much about how this ordeal has affected you.”

“There hasn’t been time.”

“I’m going to _make_ time.” When he tugged gently on her arm, she pulled back, resting her head against the back of the couch instead of on his chest. “I know you carry on regardless, and I’m so proud of you, but you don’t have to carry on alone anymore.”

He offered what she’d longed for, the chance to talk to him, to confess all the things too private, too morbid to tell anyone but Lucien. Now, granted the opportunity, she expected the words to gush out like her confession about the studio, but after so many months of silence, the words lodged in her throat. They seemed cursed, as if letting them escape would poison the reality they enjoyed. How often had she wept alone by the fire, missing him so much that she could almost feel his arms around her as they were now? How many times had she woken in the dead of night, alone in his old bed, reaching for him?

_Why can’t we just enjoy being together?_

The answer almost immediately followed. Because if they didn’t heal together, they would become strangers, like he and Mei Lin had.

“Everyone was very sympathetic for the first few months.” Her voice barely rose above the crackling fire. “Very understanding of mornings when I didn’t stir until after 10:00 or when I didn’t speak for hours or when I burst into tears in the shops over a bushel of apples because they’re your favorite fruit.” The quiver in her voice stopped her, and she returned her head to its place on his chest, relishing in the soft security of his touch, of his steady heartbeat thundering in her ear. “But I was in this kind of limbo, where I couldn’t grieve you because I didn’t believe you were really gone, but I’d lost you. When I had good days, my mood confused people, like I was supposed to be in absolute tatters all the time, like my feelings were…wrong.” A bitter laugh escaped her, and Lucien pulled her closer. “Some days I had no idea what I was feeling, but everyone seemed to so sure—my friends from book club, the butcher, my son, Matthew. I wanted to know what they knew, how they could all be so certain about _my_ feelings. Oh, God.” She pushed back from him just enough to hold his face in her hands, look for her reflection in the pools of his eyes, search for the answers she still didn’t have. “This shouldn’t matter now. You’re home. My greatest wish was granted, and I should be grateful, not wallowing.”

Lucien shook his head and covered one of her hands with his. “Just because you got what you wanted doesn’t mean everything is fine.”

“God knows it isn’t,” Jean said. “I’d do anything to spare you this pain.”

Shushing her gently, he slid both of her hands from his face to his chest. “You’re putting me back together, piece by piece, day by day. Please don’t think that just because you can’t make this last year disappear, that you’re somehow less of a miracle to me. And _please_ , darling. Don’t think that since I’m broken, you can’t rely on me.”

“Oh, Lucien.” She snaked her hand around his neck and played with the hair at his nape. “I love you _so_ much.”

“I love you. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life making this up to you—”

“No, my love. Just spend the rest of your life next to me. That’s all I need.”


End file.
